












COFmiGliT DEPGSfifc 







































A BIT OF FARM LIFE 




HOW AND WHERE 
WE LIVE 

AN OPEN DOOR TO GEOGRAPHY 


NELLIE 




j • 

> * a 


GINN AND COMPANY 


BOSTON - NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 
ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS ■ SAN FRANCISCO 













COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY NELLIE B. ALLEN 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

824.8 




&tbensum -Ur teg 

GINN AND COMPANY • PRO¬ 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 


SFP13 *24 

©Cl A 80 1821 
-v'U) I 



PREFACE 


The author bases the contents of this book on the 
pedagogical truth that children acquire new knowledge 
through ideas gained in everyday experiences and ac¬ 
tivities. Throughout its pages the child’s experiences, 
desires, and needs are used for the acquisition of new 
knowledge. Home geography is everywhere made the 
foundation for foreign geography. 

The chapters are planned for the "open book” 
method. During the recitation period the children may 
read the story with the teacher, answer the questions, 
discuss the facts, work out the problems, and attack the 
projects. The form in which the lessons are written is 
best adapted to the socialized recitation, and the work 
can be carried out by this method with the greatest 
benefit to the children. Suggestions for motivating the 
work are scattered throughout the pages. 

To prepare the child’s mind for the new information 
in the stories, questions are given and activities suggested 
at the beginning of the chapters. These should be dis¬ 
cussed before the lesson is read. Some of the suggestions 
at the ends of the chapters may be talked over in class. 
Others may serve as seat work. Still others suggest out¬ 
side activities. All new words should be used by the 

iii 


IV 


PREFACE 


children until they become a part of their vocabularies. 
The teacher will find the pronunciation of difficult 
words given as a part of the Index in the back of the 
book. The children should be taught from the beginning 
to use correct pronunciations. 

Picture study is emphasized throughout. By the study 
of the illustrations and the legends beneath them the 
children can learn a great deal. Information gained 
through picture study is usually clearer and more per¬ 
manent than that derived from the printed word. 

Many things are suggested for the children to do. 
The work of collecting material, making charts, solving 
problems, and carrying out projects is more valuable 
than reading and talking. It is better not to keep the 
charts and other material from year to year. Their 
value to the pupils lies in the work of assembling them. 


NELLIE B. ALLEN 


CONTENTS 


I. HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 

Life in Olden Days. 

The Chief Needs of People ■ . '. 

The Work of the Farmer. 

The Seeds we Eat. 

Our Great Corn Crop. 

Oranges and Bananas. 

Other Fruits which we Like. 

What we get from Cattle. 

Some Other Animal Products. 

The Shepherd and his Flock. 

A Cup of Cocoa. 

•Mother’s Cup of Tea. 

Where we get our Coffee. 

What fills our Sugar Bowl. 

The Clothes we Wear. 

Cotton Plantations and Cotton Cloth . 

Silk and Silkworms. 

Our Woolen Clothes. 

Farmers need Good Soil. 

Rain and what it does for Us. 

How Brooks and Rivers help Men . 

Making Things grow in a Desert . 

The Power of Falling Water. 

The Fisherman. 

A Can of Salmon. 

Different Kinds of Homes. 

What our Homes are made of. 

Forests and Lumbermen. 

The Fuel we Burn. 

What is Coal?. 

Oil and Gas. 

Iron, Copper, and Some Other Metals . 

How we use Rubber. 

Manufacturing. 


PAGE 

I 

• 4 
6 

9 

• 14 
. 18 

• 23 
. 26 

• 3i 

• 36 

• 38 

• 4i 

• 43 
. 46 

• 49 

• 52 

• 57 
60 
62 

• 65 
. 68 

• 7i 

• 73 

• 75 
. 78 
. 82 

• 85 
. 88 

• 9i 

• 94 

• 97 
. 100 


107 


v 


































VI 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Trade and Transportation.iio 

Why we need Laws.114 

II. OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

Our World Neighbors and their Work.117 

Where our World Neighbors Live.118 

Pedro of the Andes Mountains.121 

Luis, the Boy who lives on the Mexican Plateau . . . . 125 

Trudi’s Home in Switzerland.128 

Some Neighbors who live on the Roof of the World . . . 132 

OuALDO, THE ABYSSINIAN Boy.136 

What we saw on the Highlands . .139 

Juan’s Farm on the Plains of South America . . . . . . 141 

Some Friends on the Plains of Europe.145 

Vania’s Home on the Siberian Plain.161 

How the River Nile helps Ali.164 

What we saw on the Plains.166 

Nakla’s-Life in the Desert.168 

In the Wet Lands of the Amazon Valley.173 

With Ahtitah in Eskimo Land.177 

Some of our Neighbors of the Black Race in Africa . . . 181 

Coast-land Neighbors in Norway.185 

World Neighbors who live on Islands.188 

Our Neighbors in the Philippines.193 

Off to Australia on the Other Side of the World . . . 198 

Life in a Great City. 201 

Why People’s Homes and Work are not Alike.207 

The Five Races.210 

III. OUR OWN COUNTRY 

An Airship Trip from Boston to Galveston.218 

Flying over our Southern Border to the Pacific Shores . . 228 

Flying along our Northern Border.236 

Through our Great Central Plains.240 

On our High Plateaus and Mountains. 254 

Some Wonders of our Great West.262 

Some Interesting Sights in the East.268 

Our Own United States.274 

INDEX.277 






























HOW AND WHERE 
WE LIVE 

I. HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 

LIFE IN OLDEN DAYS 

Many years ago people lived very differently 
from the way we live today. They had no large 
cities with big buildings, fine stores, and busy 
mills and factories. They had no electric cars, and 
no automobiles to carry them long distances in 
a short time. They could not go to stores and buy 
much of their food all prepared and their clothes 
all ready to wear as we can do. 

Most of the people in those days lived on farms. 
They owned sheep and made cloth from their 
wool. Some of them raised flax and wove the fiber 
into strong linen cloth. They kept hogs, which 
they killed for pork, bacon, ham, and lard.-Their 
cows and hens gave them milk and butter and 
eggs. They had gardens where they raised vege¬ 
tables, and orchards of fruit trees. 



2 HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 

They raised wheat and corn and carried the 
grain on horseback to the little mill by the brook- 
side. The swift water turned the mill wheel, and 


AN OLD-FASHIONED FIREPLACE 

In what ways do you think that our stoves and furnaces are better than 
the fireplaces which people used in old times for heating and cooking ? 

this moved the heavy stones in the mill which 
ground the wheat and corn into flour and meal. 
They paid the miller for his work by giving him 
some grain instead of money. 




LIFE IN OLDEN DAYS 


3 


These people who lived long ago had no stoves 
in their houses. They used fireplaces such as you 
see in the picture. They cut down the trees in 
the forest and sawed and split the wood to burn 
in the fireplaces. 

When a new house was to be built, the men 
felled the trees, hewed out the beams and planks, 
and helped one another to put up the framework. 
They hammered out their iron nails and the hinges 
for their doors. They shaped the shoes for their 
horses and oxen. They lived very comfortably 
without many things which seem necessary to 
us. They made for themselves most of the things 
which they needed for food, clothing, and shelter. 

If you lived on a lonely island far, far away 
from other people as Robinson Crusoe did, what 
things would your father and mother work the 
hardest to get for you? 


THE CHIEF NEEDS OF PEOPLE 

What does your father do to earn money to buy your 
food and clothes ? What do some of your neighbors do to 
earn money for these things? What foods do you buy in 
stores ? What do you call the stores where they are sold ? 
Of what kinds of cloth are your clothes made? In what 
kinds of stores do you buy clothing? 

Of what are the homes on your street made? What 
other kinds of houses are there in your town ? 

All over the world people are working to get food 
and clothing, and homes to shelter them. Ahtitah’s 
father in the cold Northland gives her the fat meat 
of the whale or seal to eat. This food helps to 
keep her warm. Our neighbors in the hot lands 
like bananas, dates from the palm trees, and other 
fruits. In these hot countries the people wear 
very little clothing, while Ahtitah dresses in furs. 

We live where the weather is hot for some 
months and cool or cold the rest of the year. 
We eat more meat and other hearty food in cold 
weather and more fruit and vegetables in hot 
weather. We wear warm clothes in winter and 
thin ones in summer. Houses in cold lands are 
built so that Jack Frost cannot get in. In hot 
countries people do not need furnaces and stoves. 


THE CHIEF NEEDS OF PEOPLE 


S 



A MOTHER BIRD FEEDING HER YOUNG 


Animals as well as people work to get food and 
to build homes. You have seen birds building 
their nests and hunting for worms and seeds to 
eat. Pussy likes to hunt for mice. Some animals 
make their homes in holes in the ground. Others 
live in trees and caves. Some live under the water. 
What animals live in such places? 





THE WORK OF THE FARMER 


Have you ever seen farmers plowing and planting? 
At what time of the year do they do this work? Have 
you ever watched them gathering their crops ? When do 
they do this? 

What do farmers raise and bring in to your city to sell ? 
What does your mother buy that farmers in distant lands 
have raised? Make a list of these things. See who will 
get the longest list. 

Make a little farm on the table in your schoolroom. 
Make the farmer’s house and barn of cardboard. Cut out 
from paper his cows and horses. With some dirt make a 
field with furrows in it. Put a paper plow in a furrow. 
Can you find some green moss for the farmer’s field of 
grain? What other things can you make for this farm? 

Farmers are the most important workers in the 
world. What should we do without them? They 
give us our bread and meat, our fruits and vege¬ 
tables, and our milk, butter, cheese, and eggs. 

In the springtime the farmers plow their land 
and plant their crops. In warm lands they plant 
their cotton and sugar cane and rice. In cooler 
countries they sow their wheat and oats and plant 
their corn. 

Some farmers use great machines which open 

the furrows, drop the seeds, and cover them. 

6 



THE WORK OF THE FARMER 7 

Others who work on smaller farms plant all their 
crops by hand. This takes much longer. In which 
of these two ways have you seen farmers at work ? 


THE FARMER PLOWING HIS FIELD 
In what season do you think this picture may have been taken ? What 
will the farmer do when he has finished his plowing ? 

In the summer and autumn the farmers harvest 
their crops. They mow the hay and get it into 
the barn, dig the potatoes and gather the other 
vegetables, reap the grain, and pick the apples. 
Have you ever seen farmers doing these things? 




8 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


Should you like to live in the country on a farm ? 
You could see the blue sky and enjoy the fresh 
air. You could watch the raindrops give the 



DRIVING HOME THE COWS 

Where have these cows been all day? Where are they going now? 
What work must the farmer do after the cows are in the barn? 


thirsty fields a drink. You could weed the garden 
and drive the cows to pasture. You could help to 
make things live and grow and blossom and fruit. 
Isn’t this a splendid way to live? 





THE SEEDS WE EAT 


What grains or cereals_do you eat for breakfast ? What 
do you eat that is made of rice ? of corn ? of wheat ? of 
oats? What do you call the stores where your mother 
buys her meal and flour ? How many stores do you know 
which sell bread ? What is bread made of ? What grains 
do the farmers raise in the state where you live ? 

Did you ever think how many different kinds 
of seeds we eat ? Rice pudding is made of the seeds 
of the rice plant. Many people in the world eat 
a great deal of rice. Later, when you are reading 
the stories of our world neighbors, you will hear 
about some of these people who like rice so well. 

Oatmeal is made from the seeds of the oat plant. 
Do you eat oatmeal for breakfast? Perhaps you 
have seen a horse eating its dinner of oats. How 
it enjoys them! It eats all there are in the bag 
or manger and then looks around for more. 

Dark bread is made from rye seeds ground 
into meal. The flour for white bread and graham 
bread is made from the crushed seeds of wheat. 
Cattle and hogs and hens like corn and the meal 
made from it even better than people do. 

We eat more wheat seeds than any other kind. 

9 


10 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 



Think of the millions of bushels of wheat it must 
take to make the flour for our bread! How big 
the wheat farms must be! They cover many miles 
in the central and western parts of our country. 


STALKS OF WHEAT 

Flour is made from the seeds of the wheat plant. The seeds are in 
the heads of the wheat 

In places we can see nothing but the fields of yel¬ 
low grain and the blue sky above. It takes many 
men to prepare the ground and plant the wheat 
on such large farms. Shouldn’t you like to watch 
them planting their crops in the spring? 

The farmers use great plows and harrows drawn 
by several horses. These machines turn up the 




THE SEEDS WE EAT 


ii 



fresh soil, grind it fine, and smooth it off. Then 
the men go over the field again with machines 
that drop the little wheat seeds and cover them. 


PLOWING WITH A TRACTOR 

This man is using a tractor to pull his plow. The tractor is run by 
gasoline much as your automobile is. Compare this plow with the one 
in the picture on page 7 

Sometimes on large farms the machines are drawn 
by tractors instead of horses. What is a tractor? 

The little seeds lie in their dark beds until the 
rains and the warm sunshine awaken them. Then 
each seed sends up a green shoot. These grow all 



12 HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 

summer until they are nearly as tall as you are. 
Then the little seeds appear in the heads of the 
grain. The heads grow heavy and nod to and fro, 
and the stalks begin to turn yellow. Then the 
farmer knows that it is time to cut his grain. 

Some of the harvesting machines are wonder¬ 
ful. As they rumble over the field they cut the 
grain, thresh out the seeds and put them into bags, 
tie up the bags, and blow the straw into great piles. 

Now the little wheat seeds take a long journey. 
First they are carried to the railroad and loaded 
on a long freight train. Puff! puff! goes the 
engine, and off starts the train. After some hours 
the train pulls into a great city and stops with a 
jerk and a jar. "What is going to happen now?” 
think the little seeds. Almost before they can 
think again, they are drawn into a great tube 
and sucked up and up and up to the very top of 
a tall building called an elevator. 

No sooner are the seeds up than they begin to 
come down again. Faster and faster they slide 
down through a long chute into a large bin. One 
day the bin is opened, and down they slide again 
into freight cars. "Here we are off for another 
journey,” they cry, as the train rattles away. 


THE SEEDS WE EAT 


13 


The train stops beside some great buildings. 
Now the little seeds move so swiftly that they can 
hardly get breath to tell us about it. Whew! First 
come strong blasts of air which blow away the 
dirt and straw. Then the seeds are rubbed and 
brushed and blown again until they feel as clean 
as you do when you have just taken a bath. Away 
they start to the top of the building for a long slide 
downward. Ugh! Huge rollers catch them and 
grind them finer and still finer. After each grind¬ 
ing, the coarse yellow part, called bran, is separated 
from the finer, whiter part. On they go, sifting 
again and again through screens and cloth until 
finally, at the bottom of the great mill, a fine white 
powder runs out into bags. This is the flour all 
ready for your mother to make into a cake. 

In what direction from you are the big wheat 
farms of which the story tells you ? Point in this 
direction. How should you travel to get to them? 
How long should you be on the trip? Do the 
farmers near your home raise wheat? Imagine 
yourself to be a little wheat seed, and tell the class 
the story of your life from the time you were put 
in the ground until you came out of the oven in 
a nice brown loaf of bread. 


OUR GREAT CORN CROP 


Do you ever have corn bread or corn muffins for supper ? 
What do you sometimes have for breakfast which is made 
from corn? Does your mother ever buy canned corn? 
Have you ever seen corn popping and snapping over a 
hot fire? Do you like cornstarch pudding? 

The first white men who came to this country 
had never seen corn until they saw it here in the 
garden patches of the Indians. The early settlers 
learned from the Indians how to raise it and store 
it through the winter, and how to grind it into meal 
between two flat stones. Sometimes, when other 
food was scarce, corn kept them from starving. 

Now the farmers in every state raise corn. The 
biggest cornfields are on the plains in the cen¬ 
tral part of our country where the sun shines hot 
through the long summer days and Nature sends 
plenty of rain. Corn will not do well as far north 
as wheat, for it needs hotter days and a longer 
summer. 

More corn is raised on one of our big farms 
than in all the garden patches of the Indians. 
Corn is our greatest crop, and we raise more than 

all the other countries of the world put together. 

14 


OUR GREAT CORN CROP 


i5 


What do you suppose is done with all these 
millions of bushels of corn which we raise on our 
farms? If cattle, hogs, horses, mules, and hens 
could talk, they would tell you what they like to 
do with corn. They like to eat it and the meal 
which is made from it. The greatest number of 
hogs are raised in the part of our country where 
the largest cornfields are found. 

Have you ever fed any animals with corn or 
meal ? Their manners are not very good, for they 
eat it as fast as they can. They like the green 
stalks and the ears filled with juicy kernels. Some 
farmers chop up the tall green stalks by machinery 
and store them in big bins called silos. On page 32 
there is a picture of a tall, round silo filled with 
corn. This makes a good winter food for cattle. 
Corn and meal make animals fat. Cows that eat 
this food give rich milk. 

Let me tell you about some of the corn family. 
There is the sweet corn which you like to eat both 
on the cob and canned. You all like to pop corn, 
and you have heard it sputter and snap when the 
fire is hot. Which do you like the best, "cracker- 
jack,” corn balls, or hot, buttered pop corn? 

Field corn has many uses. Breakfast foods are 



16 HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 

made from field corn. The corn for our bread 
and muffins, the cornstarch for our puddings, and 


A BOY’S CORNFIELD 

What a fine field of corn this boy has raised! Perhaps he is trying to 
win the prize for the best crop of corn in his state. See how tall the 
stalk is which he is measuring with his hoe. (Courtesy of the United 
States Department of Agriculture) 

the starch for stiffening our clothes all come from 
field corn. Does your mother ever buy corn sirup 
for you to eat on bread and griddlecakes ? 



OUR GREAT CORN CROP 


i7 


Did you know that there is a great deal of oil 
in the kernels of corn? Men have invented ma¬ 
chines which press the kernels and squeeze out 
the oil. Corn oil is used in many ways. Perhaps 
your mother uses the oil made frqm corn in her 
pie crusts and her salad dressings. Ask her about 
it at supper tonight. 

In some states many boys belong to corn clubs. 
Each boy in a club tries to raise more corn on a 
certain amount of land than any other boy. The 
government gives a prize to the winner. The 
fathers of the boys do not like to be beaten, so 
they try to make their land yield more corn. In 
these and other ways we have made our corn 
crop larger than it used to be. 

Are there any corn clubs where you live? 

Try to make some corn meal as the Indians did. 
How is it different from the meal which you buy 
in the store? Why is it different? 

What animals live near you ? Give them a few 
kernels of corn or a little corn meal. See if they 
act as if they wanted more. 

Do you think of any fats or oils which we use 
that are made from fruits or seeds? What fat 
made from animals is useful? 


ORANGES AND BANANAS 


What kinds of fruit can you buy in your home town? 
Which are raised by farmers near you? Which grow in 
hot countries? Which come in barrels? in boxes? in 
baskets? Which ones are dried? Which are canned? 
In what kinds of stores can you buy fruit? What kinds 
of fresh fruits have you seen in winter? Where did they 
come from? 

That big yellow orange on the table is going to 
tell us a story. Listen, and you will hear about 
its life. 

I am a big, round, juicy, yellow orange. I came 
from a beautiful grove in California. This state 
is in the part of our country nearest the Pacific 
Ocean. Many of my cousins live in the South, in 
the state of Florida. 

In my grove there are hundreds of trees. They 
have glossy green leaves and waxy white blossoms. 
In blossoming time the air is very sweet. I was 
born just after the blossoms faded. At first I 
looked like a little green marble, but I soon grew 
big and yellow. There were a great many oranges 
on my tree. We were so heavy that some of the 
large branches hung low near the ground. 

18 


ORANGES AND BANANAS 


19 



© Burgett Brothers 

AN ORANGE TREE LOADED WITH FRUIT 


Can you imagine how pretty an orange tree is with its glossy green 
leaves and its yellow balls of fruit ? 


One day little Alice and her father were walk¬ 
ing through the grove and looking at the trees. 
"See how yellow the oranges are! ” said Alice. 
"Yes,” said her father, "they ard large and 
fine. We must begin picking them tomorrow.” 



20 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


The next day a man picked me and many of 
my brothers and sisters from our tree. He carried 
us to a building where there were thousands of 
other oranges. Alice and her mother and other 
women and girls were working here. After I had 
been washed, Alice picked me up, wrapped me 
carefully in paper, and put me in a box. When 
the box was full and the cover nailed on, a man 
put it with other boxes on a big truck and took 
us to the railroad station. 

There were so many of us at the station that 
we filled many cars. Then we started on a long 
journey to a large city. Here we rode in trucks 
to a big market where there were all sorts of fruits 
and vegetables. Many men were buying and sell¬ 
ing. The man who bought the box that I was in 
put it on his truck and brought me to your city. 
And here I am, round and yellow and juicy and 
sweet. Doesn’t it make your mouth water to think 
of eating me? 

The banana could tell us just as interesting a 
story as the orange. I will tell you its story, and 
then you can imagine that you are a banana and 
tell the class about your life. 

The people in the United States eat millions 


ORANGES AND BANANAS 


21 



A BANANA TREE WITH ITS BUNCH OF BANANAS 
Notice how the bananas grow. They look upside down. A banana 
tree bears only one bunch of fruit. (Courtesy of the United States 
Department of Agriculture) 


of bananas every year. You have seen the big 
bunches hanging in the stores and being carried 
through the streets. Some of them are green, but 
they soon ripen and turn yellow. 



22 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


Bananas grow in hot countries. They go on long 
journeys before they reach our big cities. They 
are picked when green, for if they ripened on the 
trees, they would spoil before they reach us. 

Each banana tree bears one bunch of fruit. 
While this bunch is growing, a new shoot springs 
up. The next season this bears its one bunch of 
bananas and then dies, and another plant grows 
up from the roots. 

In the countries south of us there are large 
banana plantations. When a ship is to call at the 
seaport, workmen cut the big bunches and send 
them by rail down to the coast. They are put into 
rooms on the ship which are just cool enough 
to keep the fruit from ripening. Then they are 
brought to our cities. 

Do you like bananas as well as oranges? 

In what direction from your home are the orange 
groves of California? of Florida? Point toward 
them. How long would it take you to go to Cali¬ 
fornia? Should you travel by land or by water? 

Point toward the hot countries where our 
bananas come from. 

Cut out from paper a banana and an orange. 
If you have time, cut out other fruits. 


OTHER FRUITS WHICH WE LIKE 


Name all the fruits which you know that come from 
warm lands. What ones grow where the weather is cold 
part of the year ? What fruits do you eat that have been 
dried ? Do you think that they come from a place where 
there is much or little rain ? 

Does your father have any apple trees ? Apples 
grow in most parts of our country. Some are red 
and some are yellow. Some are sweet and some 
are sour. Some will keep through the winter, while 
others must be eaten soon after they ripen. What 
kinds of apples have you eaten? 

Each year we raise millions of barrels of apples. 
We sell some of them to people in other countries, 
but we use many of them ourselves. What does 
your mother make of apples ? When do you think 
that an apple tree is more beautiful, in the spring, 
when it is covered with pink-and-white blossoms, 
or in the autumn, when the balls of red and yellow 
fruit make the branches bend low? 

Have you ever seen a peach orchard in the spring 
when the trees are full of pink blossoms? When 
the blossoms fall, the fruit begins to form. Some¬ 
times Jack Frost comes around and nips the tender 
23 


24 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


fruit. Then we do not have so many peaches in 
the summer to eat and to can. 

At picking time the people who raise peaches 
are very busy in their orchards. The fruit must be 
picked, packed, and sent away to the cities just 
as quickly as possible. Fast freight trains and 
motor trucks carry the fruit to the city markets 
where it is sold. When you see peaches for sale 
in the markets and stores, notice how nicely they 
are packed in the baskets. Do you think you could 
pack them as well? 

Which kind of grapes do you like best, the 
dark-purple ones, the white ones, or the little green 
ones? Perhaps you like grapes better after they 
are dried. Then we call them raisins. What have 
you eaten that had raisins in it? 

Grapes grow in large vineyards. The vines are 
cut back until they are no taller than you are, and 
tied to stakes. Each little vine bears beautiful 
clusters of fruit. When the grapes which are to 
be made into raisins are picked, they are laid in 
shallow boxes and put out in the sunshine to dry. 
Most of our raisins come from the state of Cali¬ 
fornia. Little rain falls in California at the time 
of the year when the grapes are drying in the 



OTHER FRUITS WHICH WE LIKE 25 

fields. In the hot, dry air they soon change into 
sweet brown raisins. 

Other dried fruits come from California. Do 
you like prunes and apricots? The picture on 


APRICOTS DRYING IN THE SUNSHINE 
In what state do you think this picture was taken ? Why is so much 
fruit dried here ? 


this page shows you boxes of apricots drying in 
the sunshine. It would take you a long time to 
count the hundreds of carloads of these fruits 
which are sent out of this state every year. 

















WHAT WE GET FROM CATTLE 

What do you call the stores where meat is sold ? What 
kind of meat did you have for dinner? Name the differ¬ 
ent kinds of meat that you have eaten. What canned 
meats does your mother buy ? Where do the storekeepers 
get the meat they sell? How does it get to your city? 
Where does the milk that you drink come from ? the butter 
and cheese that you eat ? 

Most of the meat that we eat comes from animals 
which live on great farms called ranches. These 
are in the central and western parts of our country. 
Many cattle and sheep live on ranches and farms 
in other countries. Sometimes we buy meat from 
the people in these lands. It has to be brought on 
long voyages over the ocean. 

Should you like to visit a big ranch where thou¬ 
sands of cattle live? Your nearest neighbor might 
be some miles away. You would like the long rides 
on your pony over the wide plains. 

Ranchmen have many horses. The cowboys 
often ride long distances after the cattle. Cow¬ 
boys are fine riders and can do wonderful things 
on horseback. Sometimes many of them meet and 
have tests to see who can ride the wildest horses. 

26 


WHAT WE GET FROM CATTLE 


27 


The cowboys see that the cattle find grass to 
eat and water to drink. They care for them in all 



© R. R. Doubleday 


A COWBOY ON A BUCKING HORSE 
Should you like to watch a contest among the cowboys to see who can 
ride the wildest horse ? If this rider can stay on this horse, I think he 
will win the prize. Don’t you think so ? 


kinds of weather. The cattle from many ranches 
wander over the plains. The cowboys round them 
up and sort out those of the different owners. 
Many calves have been born since the last 




28 HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 

round-up, and these must be marked with the 
brand, or sign, of the owner. Then he can always 
tell what animals belong to him. The cowboys 
do the branding with a hot iron, which singes off 
the hair. Notice some horses and cows and see if 
any of them have brands on their hips. After 
the branding the animals go back to feed on the 
grassy plains and hills. 

The cowboys separate from the rest of the herd 
the cattle which are to be sent to market. These 
are rounded up near the railroad and driven one 
by one up narrow runways into freight cars. Then 
they have a long ride to some large city. 

Here they live in pens called stockyards until 
they are killed. In Chicago and other cities the 
stockyards cover miles of ground. They are noisy, 
dusty places. Drovers are shouting, cattle are low¬ 
ing, sheep are bleating, and hogs are grunting and 
squealing. You will find a picture of a part of 
the Chicago stockyards on page 250. 

Cattle give us many useful things. You will 
read about some of them in the next story. Many 
of our combs and buttons and hairpins and tooth¬ 
brush handles are made from their horns and bones. 
Cheap cloth is made from their hairy coats. The 



WHAT WE GET FROM CATTLE 29 

hoofs and horns and the marrow which fills the 
hollow bones make good glue. Some of the blood 
and other parts of their bodies are made into 


CATTLE FEEDING ON A RANCH 

There are many ranches in our great West where thousands of cattle 
feed on the coarse brown grass which grows in this part of our country. 
The next story tells you why these cattle are more useful for their 
hides and flesh than for the milk which they give 

fertilizer. The farmer buys this to spread on his 
land. It makes his plants grow well and yield 
good crops. 




30 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


The hides, or skins, of cattle are made into 
leather. In our shoe factories we use not only 
cattle hides but also the skins of goats and sheep 
and other animals. Many of these come from 
animals which live in our own country. Many 
others are brought over the ocean from ranches 
and farms in lands far away. 

You will read in later chapters about some boys 
and girls who live on farms in other countries 
where cattle and sheep are raised. Perhaps your 
shoes are made of leather manufactured from the 
hides and skins of the animals on these farms. 
It takes immense amounts of leather for the 
millions of pairs of shoes which are made every 
year in our shoe factories. 

Perhaps some man in the shoe store or in the 
shop where you have your shoes repaired can tell 
you what kind of leather your shoes are made of 
and where the skins came from. 

Count the many useful things which we get from 
cattle. Can you spell the names of all these things ? 
What is leather? How many different things can 
you think of which are made of leather? 


SOME OTHER ANIMAL PRODUCTS 

How much milk do you drink each day ? How does it 
get to your house or to the store where you buy it ? What 
animal gives you this good food ? Of what is butter made ? 
Did you ever see anyone making butter? Do you know 
any other food besides butter which is made from milk? 

The cattle that feed on the dry brown grass on 
our Western ranches do not give much milk. To 
give rich yellow milk, cows must have plenty of 
green grass and clover and grain and meal. Some 
cows are fed on corn meal, and some are given meal 
made from cotton seeds. In winter, when there is 
no green grass in the fields, the farmer gives his 
cows hay and the juicy corn which was chopped 
up in the fall and put into the silo. 

Cows fed on these good foods give rich milk. 
People make butter and cheese from it. These 
three things—milk, butter, and cheese—are called 
dairy products. 

On the dairy farms there are big barns for the 
cows. The barns and the cows must be kept clean. 
The men who care for the cows must be clean, too. 

The cows are milked night and morning. On 
some farms the workmen do this. On others the 


32 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


cows are milked by machines run by gasoline or 
by electricity. This is a quicker way of milking. 
Some dairy farms are near large cities. The 



SCENE ON A DAIRY FARM 


The cattle on this dairy farm are fed with grain and hay and green 
grass in order that they may give us a good deal of milk. Those 
tall, round silos are filled with chopped corn. How good it will taste 
to the cows in the winter when there is no green grass. (Courtesy of 
Doubleday, Page & Company) 


farmer sends his milk to the city in wagons or 
trucks. Other farms are farther away in the 
country, and the milk goes to the city by train. 






SOME OTHER ANIMAL PRODUCTS 


33 


Does a milk train go through your town carrying 
milk to the babies who live in some large city? 

The milk is put into bottles by machinery. The 
machines fill the bottles, put on the paper caps, 
and push the bottles along to the men who put 
them in boxes. Then they are ready to be taken 
around the city to the customers. 

Some farmers who sell cream use a separator. 
This is a machine which separates the cream from 
the milk. The cream flows out of one spout, and 
the milk out of another. Then the farmer can 
sell the cream. He may use the skim milk to feed 
his chickens and pigs. 

The farmer may sell his cream in bottles or he 
may send it to a creamery to be made into butter. 
In a creamery the cream is put in big churns which 
are run by machinery. The churning separates the 
fatty part from the rest of the cream. It is worked 
over to get all the milk out of it. Then it is salted 
and put into large tubs or into molds. 

Where do you suppose the butter that you 
spread on your bread this morning was made? 
See if you can find out. 

Some of the milk from dairy farms is made into 
cheese. We make a great deal of cheese in our 


34 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 



country, but we also buy much fine cheese from 
other countries. 

Which of the three dairy products that you 
have been reading about do you like the best? 


BOTTLING MILK 

Does the milk that you use come in bottles? Perhaps the bottles were 
filled by a machine in a place like this. Ask your milkman or grocer 
about it 

I wonder how many of you had a good fresh egg 
for your breakfast this morning. Most farmers 
keep some hens and sell the eggs which they get. 
In the spring they set a mother hen on some eggs 







SOME OTHER ANIMAL PRODUCTS 


35 


to keep them warm. In about three weeks the 
baby chicks come out of the eggs. Did you ever 
hold a baby chick in your hand ? The soft, fluffy 
little thing is very cunning. 

There are many large poultry farms in our 
country where there are thousands of hens. In¬ 
stead of letting a hen sit on a few eggs, the poultry 
farmer raises his chickens in an incubator. This 
is a kind of box which holds a great many eggs 
and keeps them warm as a hen would. 

After the little chickens are hatched, the farmer 
keeps them in a "brooder,” where they are as 
warm as if the mother hen tucked them under 
her feathers. 

What things do you eat that have eggs in them ? 
Can you find out where the eggs that your mother 
uses come from? How do people keep eggs a long 
time without spoiling? Have you ever fed any 
hens and chickens? What do they like to eat? 
What other kinds of poultry have you seen? 


THE SHEPHERD AND HIS FLOCK 

What kind of meat do we get from sheep and lambs? 
What do we wear which comes from sheep? Do any 
sheep live near your home? Why do farmers who own 
many cattle and sheep have large farms? Some coun¬ 
tries are so crowded with people and cities that there is 
no room for large farms. How do people in such lands 
get their meat, milk, butter, and cheese? Do we live in 
such a country or do we have room for large farms? 

Sheep live on ranches as cattle do. They feed 
far away from the ranch house for weeks at a time. 
Each flock may have hundreds or thousands of 
sheep in it. It is cared for by a shepherd and his 
dog. Each shepherd sees that his flock has plenty 
of grass and water. He drives away any wild 
animal which would like to catch a sheep or a 
tender lamb for its dinner. At night he gathers 
the flock together in a safe place. 

Without his dog the shepherd could not do all 
these things. The dog can drive the sheep better 
than its master can. Its barking wakes the shep¬ 
herd at night and warns him that wolves or moun¬ 
tain lions are near. 

When the shepherd is out with the sheep, he 
may live in a tent. Sometimes he has a big covered 

36 



THE SHEPHERD AND HIS FLOCK 37 

wagon for his home. When baby lambs are sick or 
cold, the shepherd often puts them into the wagon 
and cares for them there until they are stronger. 


THE SHEPHERD AND HIS HELPER 

A shepherd loves his horse and dog and sheep. 
They are his good friends. He loves, too, the 
bright stars, the blue sky, the open plain, the dis¬ 
tant mountains, and the clear, crisp air. Should 
you like to camp out with him sometime? 




A CUP OF COCOA 


What did you drink this morning with your breakfast ? 
What did you drink with your supper last night? What 
do your father and mother drink with their meals? Tea 
and coffee are not so good for boys and girls as milk and 
cocoa. How many things can you think of that cocoa and 
chocolate are used for? 

We can sail to the cocoa plantations in South America 
on either the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific Ocean. In 
what direction from you is each of these oceans ? Which 
one is nearer to you? Point toward it. How long would 
it take you to reach it? 

Pack your thin clothes and prepare for a long 
trip. We are going to the hot countries south of 
us to visit a cocoa plantation. We shall sail south¬ 
ward over the great ocean to South America. 
There are many cocoa plantations on the lowlands 
near the rivers, and we can sail in small boats 
almost or quite to them. 

Here we are at the plantation. See the big pods 
on the trees! They hang close to the trunks and 
branches. The men cut the pods from the trees 
with knives fastened to the ends of long poles. 

Let us break open one of the pods. It has thirty 
or forty beans in it, each about the size of an 

38 


A CUP OF COCOA 


39 



© Publishers’ Photo Service, Inc. 

OPENING COCOA PODS 


See the pile of cocoa pods. The workers are cutting them open and 
taking out the cocoa beans. What is done to the beans after they are 
taken from the pods ? 


almond. The beans are packed so closely that if 
you take them out you can never get them all 
in again. 

The workmen open the pods, take out the beans, 
and dry them in the sun. Millions of bags of these 



HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


40 

dried cocoa beans come from different lands to the 
cocoa factories in the United States. 

Let us visit one of these factories. How good 
the air smells! It makes us think of chocolate 
cake and candy and all sorts of good things. 

The beans are first cleaned and then roasted in 
the biggest ovens you ever saw. Then they are 
crushed, and the shells and dust blown away. 
Now the crushed kernels are put into one end of 
a great machine. Here they are ground finer and 
finer until the chocolate flows out of the other end 
like a stream of cold molasses. This runs into 
molds and hardens. This is cooking chocolate. 
Have you ever bought a cake of it for your 
mother to use in her cooking? 

To make the sweet chocolate which you like to 
eat, sugar is added before the chocolate hardens. 
Cocoa beans contain a great deal of fat. When this 
is taken out, a fine dry powder is left. This is 
the cocoa which you buy of your grocer in cans. 
How good a cup of hot cocoa tastes with bread 
and butter at supper time! 

Can you draw a picture of a cup and saucer 
and a can of cocoa? There are some hard words 
in this lesson. Try to learn to spell them all. 


MOTHER’S CUP OF TEA 

Soften a little tea in water and unroll the leaves. What 
shape are they? Cut from paper some leaves of the 
same shape. 

Here is a story to tell your mother while she is 
drinking her cup of tea. 

There are many million people living in China 
and Japan, and you will read more about them in 
other stories. In both of these countries there are 
many farms where the tea plant is raised. The 
Chinese and Japanese used tea for many years 
before people in other countries had ever heard 
of it. They drink a great deal of tea, and they 
send much more over the oceans to people in 
other parts of the world. 

Tea plants look a little like rosebushes, and long 
rows of them cover the hillsides in China, Japan, 
and in another country called India. In the spring, 
when the leaves are young and tender, the people 
are very busy. Then Wang and his mother and 
brothers and sisters spend long days in the fields 
picking the tea leaves. 

When their baskets are full, they carry them 
down to the factory in the valley where Wang’s 

41 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


42 

father works. Here the leaves are dried and rolled 
and packed in boxes. These boxes are carried in 
trains, in boats on the rivers, and on the backs of 
men to the shipping ports on the coast. From here 
they are sent to countries far over the ocean. 

When you see your mother drinking her cup of 
tea, perhaps you will think of Wang picking the 
tea leaves, of his father in the tea factory, of the 
men who carried the tea to the coast and loaded 
it on the ships, of the sailors who brought it across 
the ocean, of the men who unloaded the vessels 
and stored the tea in great buildings, of those who 
put it on motor trucks or trains, of the drivers who 
brought it to your city, and of the man who keeps 
the store where you bought it. 

Count the number of people who have helped 
your mother get her cup of tea. See if you can 
find out the names of different kinds of tea 
which your grocer sells in his store. 



JAPANESE TEA PICKERS 














. 








t. 







WHERE WE GET OUR COFFEE 


What do we drink that animals give us? What do we 
drink that comes from the clouds ? How does it get there ? 
What do we drink which is made from beans that grow in a 
large pod ? What drink is made from the leaves of a plant ? 


Much of our coffee comes from Brazil. This is 
a country larger than the United States. It lies in 
the warm part of the earth to the south of us. 
Point in that direction. 

Coffee trees are very pretty when they are 
covered with the little red balls of fruit. You 
might think that they were cherries, for they look 
something like them. 

Safely hidden inside the soft pulp are two small 
beans or seeds. They lie with their flat sides close 
together like the halves of a peanut. Our coffee 
is made from these beans. 

Should you like to have a race with the boys 
and girls on a coffee plantation to see who could 
pick the most berries in a day ? Think how many 
pickers there must be to gather all the berries 
from the millions of coffee trees which grow in the 
warm part of the earth. 

Perhaps you would like better to ride on the 

43 


44 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


big wagons filled with berries and see what be¬ 
comes of them. The soft pulp is crushed and 
washed away. Then the beans are spread out on 
the smooth floor of a big yard to dry. Workmen 
with long rakes turn the beans over from time to 
time and cover them if there is danger of rain. 

The coffee beans are covered with a hard, tough 
skin, or shell. After they have been dried they are 
run between heavy rollers, which break the shells 
into small bits. Big fans blow away the pieces. 

Many coffee plantations are far away from a 
railroad or a seaport. The beans are put into bags 
and carried on the backs of donkeys to a railroad 
station or a river. From here they are taken to a 
city on the seacoast where ships are waiting to 
bring the coffee beans to our country. 

Even now the beans do not look like those 
which the grocer puts into his grinder. They are 
much lighter in color. They must be roasted to 
make them brown and give them the taste which 
your mother likes. 

Our country’s coffeepot holds about half the 
coffee raised on all the great plantations of the 
world. It all has to be brought from other lands, 
for we do not raise any coffee here. What do you 


WHERE WE GET OUR COFFEE 


45 



© Publishers’ Photo Service, Inc. 

ON A COFFEE PLANTATION 

See how thick the little berries are on this young coffee tree. Think 
how many workers it must take to supply the world with coffee 


suppose we send over the oceans to other countries 
in return for all the coffee which they send us? 

See if your grocer can tell you where the coffee 
comes from which he sells in his store. 





WHAT FILLS OUR SUGAR BOWL 

What do you like that is made of sugar? Name all the 
ways you can think of in which we use sugar. What kinds 
of sugar have you seen ? 

Should you like to live on a sugar plantation? 
You could play hide and seek under the long, rus¬ 
tling leaves, for sugar cane grows much taller than 
you are. A cane field looks much like a field of 
corn. The sugar is in the juice of the tall jointed 
stalks. The children in warm lands where sugar 
cane grows like to suck pieces of the stalks to get 
the sweet juice. It is as good as candy. 

See the workmen cutting the stalks and trim¬ 
ming off the leaves. There go some big loads of 
stalks to the mills. Here heavy rollers crush and 
press them to squeeze out the juice. This is boiled 
down to get the sugar. The coarse yellow crystals 
which form are called raw sugar. Many things 
must be done to make it into fine white grains 
like those in your sugar bowl. 

Some sugar is made from beets. You cannot 
tell from looks or taste whether the sugar on your 
table is cane sugar or beet sugar. 

Sugar beets grow in cooler lands than the sugar 

46 



WHAT FILLS OUR SUGAR BOWL 47 

cane does. They are much larger and lighter in 
color than the beets we eat. In the mills they are 
cut up by machinery and put into warm water. 


A FIELD OF SUGAR CANE 

Courtesy of the United States Department of Agriculture 

This soaks out the sugar. The sweetened water 
is boiled down to get the raw sugar. Then this 
is made into fine white grains. 

Have you ever eaten maple sugar ? This comes 
from the sap of the maple tree. When the sap 



48 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


begins to flow in the spring, a little hole is bored 
in each tree trunk. This is called tapping the tree. 
The sap drips into a pail hung below the hole. 



A FIELD OF SUGAR BEETS 


Men collect the sap and carry it to the sugar- 
house. Here it is boiled down into sugar and sirup. 

Ask your grocer how many kinds of sugar he 
keeps. Do you know what each kind is made 
from ? What do you call the sugar that bees make ? 
What kind of sugar do you like the best ? 




THE CLOTHES WE WEAR 


Have you a cat or a dog ? What are their coats made 
of ? Do they wear the same coats in winter and summer ? 
What kind of coats do canary birds wear ? Did you ever 
see a canary changing its coat for a new one ? How long 
did it take? 

What is your winter coat made of ? your dress ? your 
sweater? your handkerchief? your stockings? your rib¬ 
bons? What are the sheets on your bed made of? the 
cloth on your dining table ? 

Is there a mill in your city which makes cloth or yarn ? 

We have been reading about the many things 
which farmers give us to eat and drink. We de¬ 
pend on the farmer also for the materials for 
our clothes. 

In cold lands people wear the skins of animals. 
In hot lands they wear few or no clothes. Some 
people make cloth from the fiber and bark of 
trees which grow near their homes. 

Most of our summer clothes are made of cotton. 
Many of our winter clothes are made of wool 
because wool is warmer. We also use the furs of 
animals for winter clothing. We make the hides 
of cattle and the skins of sheep and goats into 
leather for our shoes and coats and gloves. 

49 


So 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


We use silk for many things we wear. The girls’ 
ribbons and the boys’ neckties are silk. What 



© Publishers’ Photo Service, Inc. 


SOME SCHOOL CHILDREN IN SOUTHERN ASIA 
You would know from the way these children are dressed that they 
live in a warm land. Compare their clothes with those of the three 
little Eskimo boys on the next page 

else can you think of that is made of silk? In 
another story you will read about the little creature 
that gives us silk and of the curious way in which 
the raw silk thread is made. 



THE CLOTHES WE WEAR 


5i 

Have you a linen dress or handkerchief? The 
cloth called linen is made from the fiber of the 



© Ewing Galloway 

THREE LITTLE ESKIMO BOYS IN ALASKA 


These boys will be warm even if the weather is cold. They have on 
two suits of clothes. If you will look on page 180 you will find out 
how they put them on 

flax plant. The flax fiber is very strong, and 
the cloth made from it wears a long time. People 
used to raise flax and make linen from its fiber 
long before they knew anything about cotton. 



COTTON PLANTATIONS AND COTTON CLOTH 

Unravel a piece of coarse cotton cloth. See if you can 
find the threads which run crosswise. Pull out some of the 
threads which run the other way. Can you see how the 
threads go over and under one another and so hold 
the cloth together? 

Are most of our clothes made of cotton, wool, silk, 
or linen? 

The cotton plant needs hot weather to make it 
grow well, so our cotton plantations are in the 
sunny South. 

Cotton plants bear pretty flowers which are 
cream white at first and then change to yellow and 
red. When these drop off, a seed pod, or boll, 
forms where each blossom grew. The boll grows 
until it is larger than an English walnut. When 
it is ripe, it bursts open. "Oh,” you say, "it is 
filled with cotton wool.” This soft white stuff 
is the cotton fiber. 

The picking season is a busy time on the cotton 
plantations. Into the fields come the pickers 
—men, women, and children—with their sacks 
and baskets. Walking back and forth between 
the rows of plants, they gather the fiber from the 



COTTON PLANTATIONS; COTTON CLOTH 53 

open bolls. On large plantations they spend many 
days in the fields before the fiber is all picked. 


PICKING COTTON IN THE SUNNY SOUTH 
In the picture you can see how the pickers gather the cotton fiber from 
the opened bolls. What is done to the fiber after it is picked ? 

If you can get a handful of cotton fiber as it 
comes from the boll, try to pull it apart. Can you 
feel the little hard seeds in it? It is not easy to get 
them out. If you worked all day, you could pick 
out only a little pile of seeds from the fiber. 



54 HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 

Many years ago all the seeds had to be picked 
from the cotton fiber by hand. One day a young 
man was visiting some friends on a Southern cotton 
plantation. His name was Eli Whitney. He liked 
to make things, and was always trying to invent 
new tools and machines. When he saw how long 
it took to pick the cotton seeds from the fiber, he 
set about making a machine to do this work. He 
succeeded in making a machine called the cotton 
gin, which would comb the seeds from the fiber. 
It did the work much faster than people could 
do it by hand. 

When the cotton planters found that the cotton 
gin could comb the seeds from the fiber so quickly, 
they began to plant more cotton. Larger cotton 
gins were built; later, when machines for spin¬ 
ning and weaving had been invented, men built 
great factories where the fiber could be spun into 
thread and woven into cloth. 

For many years the men who raised cotton did 
not know what to do with the seeds. They used 
some for planting and threw the rest away as waste. 
Today the cotton seeds are worth millions of 
dollars. This is because we have found out how 
to use them. We have learned that cotton seeds 


COTTON PLANTATIONS; COTTON CLOTH 55 

contain a great deal of oil. This is pressed out 
and used in many ways. Some people use it in 
cooking, in salad dressing, and in place of butter. 
Do you ever use oleomargarine? This is made 



The boll is really the seed pod of the cotton plant. The seeds are 
packed snugly in the soft white fiber in the boll 


from cottonseed oil. Perhaps the sardines which 
you buy of your grocer are packed in this oil. 

The hulls, or skins, of the cotton seeds are used 
to feed cattle and to mix with fertilizers. The 
crushed seeds are made into meal. Should you 
like to watch some cows and hogs eating cotton¬ 
seed meal for supper? It makes them grow fat. 






56 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


Now let us go back and see what becomes of 
the cotton fiber after the seeds are taken out of it. 
In the mills machines comb out the tangled fibers 
until they lie straight and smooth. Other machines 
pull and twist the fibers into thread and yarn. 

Have you ever woven strips of paper over and 
under and over and under into a pretty pattern ? 
That is the way the great looms weave the yarn 
into cloth. 

Long ago people used to weave the cloth for 
their dresses and suits by hand in their homes. 
Now such work is done in great mills. Which do 
you think is the better way? Why? 

Ask your mother what the oils and fats which 
she uses in cooking are made from. Do you ever 
use olive oil? See if you can find out where it 
comes from. 

Did you know that a great deal of oil is made 
from peanuts ? Perhaps your grocer can tell you 
something about peanut oil and about coconut oil. 
Ask him about them. 


SILK AND SILKWORMS 

When school opens in the fall, catch some caterpillars 
and keep them under netting in the schoolroom. Watch 
them spin their cocoons. In the spring notice what kind 
of moth or butterfly comes out of the cocoon. Did you 
ever see any animal change its skin ? Tell the class about it. 

Did you know that your pretty ribbons and 
silk neckties are the gift of a kind of caterpillar? 
The Chinese and Japanese raise millions of these 
caterpillars, or silkworms. Often the boys and 
girls help to feed them with tender leaves from 
the mulberry tree. 

When the caterpillar is full grown, it begins to 
spin a cocoon of fine silk thread. In about three 
days it is safely hidden inside. In the cocoon 
the silkworm changes into a moth just as cater¬ 
pillars do. 

The moth breaks the threads at one end of the 
cocoon and comes out into the light and air. Soon 
it lays its tiny eggs and dies. From the eggs new 
silkworms are hatched. 

The three pictures on page 59 illustrate the 
life of the silkworm. In the upper picture you 

see the caterpillar eating a mulberry leaf. The 

57 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


58 

middle picture shows you the cocoons that it 
spins from fine silk thread which it manufactures 
inside its body. Some of the cocoons are cut 
open so that you can see the little hard chrysalis 
into which the caterpillar changes while in the 
cocoon. 

The chrysalis changes into a moth. In the lower 
picture you see the moth and the hole which it 
has made in the cocoon in order to get out into 
the light and air. 

People who raise silkworms for the silk thread 
which they spin put the cocoons into hot water 
to kill the little creatures inside. Then they un¬ 
wind the thread from the cocoons. The women 
used to do all this work by hand in their homes. 
Now it is done by machines in large factories. 

The long fibers which are unwound from the 
cocoons are twisted together and made into strong 
silk thread. This can be woven into cloth. How 
strange it seems that a little creature like a cater¬ 
pillar gives us such a beautiful thing as silk! 

We do not raise silkworms in the United States, 
but we buy from other countries a great deal of 
the silk which silkworms spin. We manufacture 
this into cloth and many other pretty things. 



© Corticelli Silk Co. 


FROM SILKWORM TO MOTH 




OUR WOOLEN CLOTHES 


If you lived in a warm country, what kind of cloth 
should you choose for your clothes? What should you 
want for clothes if you lived in a cold country? Name 
four things from which cloth is made. 

Name some things which the farmer raises for clothing 
materials. If you were a farmer, what should you like 
best to raise on your farm? 

Do you remember the story about the shepherd 
V and his flock ? What thick, warm coats the sheep 
had! In early summer the shepherds drive the 
sheep to the home ranch, where they leave their 
warm coats for their master’s use. 

The wool is sheared or clipped off with great 
shears. Sometimes the shears are worked by 
electricity. It takes only a few minutes to cut 
off the thick, soft coat. It lies in a heap on the 
floor as the sheep scampers away. 

The wool from thousands of sheep is sent by 
train to cities where there are great factories. 
Some wool comes also from countries across the 
ocean. The wool is very dirty and greasy and 
must be washed in hot soapy water. Then it is 
brushed and combed until its fibers lie straight 

6o 



OUR WOOLEN CLOTHES 61 

and smooth. The soft wool fibers are drawn out 
finer and finer, twisted into thread and yarn, and 
woven into cloth very much as the cotton fiber is. 


SHEARING SHEEP IN THE PASTURE 
What thick coats sheep have! See what a pile of wool these men have 
taken from the sheep they are shearing. What will be done with it ? 

Are you wearing today anything made of 
wool? Name some things which are made of wool. 
Have you ever cut out a sheep from stiff paper? 
Try to make one so that it will stand up. 



FARMERS NEED GOOD SOIL 


Bring into school some samples of the different kinds 
of soil that you can find. Look for some coarse sand. 
Notice how sharp the grains are. Rub two rocks together 
as hard as you can. Did any bits crumble off? This is 
one way in which soil is made. 

Try to find some very dark soil in which there are 
broken pieces of leaves, twigs, and grass. If there is any 
fine clay near your school, bring in a sample of that. 

Plant some seeds in the different soils. Put them in a 
sunny window and water them every other day. In which 
soil do the plants grow the best ? 

We know that farmers are the most important 
workers in the world, for without them we could 
not get our food and clothing. But farmers can¬ 
not make things grow without the help of Nature. 
There must be warm sunshine, plenty of water, 
and soil which contains the food that the plants 
need. Without these three things the rice will not 
grow for the Chinese, or the sugar for the farmers 
in Cuba. Without sun and water and rich soil 
there would be no wheat fields and no cattle and 
sheep ranches. There would be no trees loaded 
with cocoa beans and coffee berries, no tea plants 
on the hillsides of distant countries, no juicy 

62 



GOOD AND POOR SOIL 

In the field shown in the picture on the upper half of the page the soil 
is poor. Only small crops can be grown on it. See what a fine crop of 
corn the farmer has raised in the field shown in the lower picture. 
This is because the soil is rich 






64 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


oranges for us to eat, and no cotton plants growing 
in the South to give us the fiber for our clothes. 

Plants would not grow and we could not live 
without the sunshine, the water, and the rich soil. 

In most parts of the earth the soil covers the 
solid rock beneath. In places it is many feet deep. 
In other places it is very thin, and the bed rock 
lies close to the surface. Perhaps you have seen 
places where the rock lies on the surface with no 
covering of soil. 

What is soil? Most soil is made from rocks. 
They break up and crumble into sand and clay. 
Wood, leaves, plants, and grass decay and make 
soil which we call leaf mold. They give back to 
the earth the goodness which sun and rain have 
given them. Leaf mold is very rich, and plants 
grow well in it. Leaf mold mixed with sand 
and clay is called loam. This is a good soil for 
plants. 

Where the soil contains the food that plants 
need, they grow well. Where there is little plant 
food in the soil, farmers have to put in more. 
This food is called fertilizer. 

What makes soil rich? Why are not all soils 
alike? What different soils have you seen? 


RAIN AND WHAT IT DOES FOR US 


Wet your hand and hold it in the sunshine for a few 
minutes. What becomes of the water when your hand 
dries ? What becomes of the water in the clothes that are 
hung out to dry? When it stops raining, the sidewalks 
are always wet; in a few hours they are perfectly dry. 
Where has the water gone ? 

Put a saucer of water in a sunny window in your school¬ 
room. Look at it every day. What becomes of the water ? 

How long could you go without a drink of water ? 
People traveling across deserts where there is no 
water sometimes die of thirst. All animals need 
water. Have you ever watched thirsty horses or 
dogs or birds taking a drink? Plants need water, 
too. Without it they soon wither and die. 

The rain is the farmer’s friend, for without water 
he could not raise his crops. Where does the rain 
come from? We know that it never comes from 
the clear blue sky. Before the rain falls, the gray 
clouds gather high above us, hiding the sun’s face. 
We say that the rain comes from the clouds. 

Clouds are really just masses of little parti¬ 
cles of water vapor. Perhaps you have never heard 
of water vapor before, but you know what water 




66 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


is and what air is. The air can always hold a 
great deal of water if it is in very tiny particles. 
The water in your saucer in the schoolroom changes 
slowly into little particles of water vapor which 
disappear into the air. Water vapor is invisible; 
we cannot see it, but we can see that the water 
in the saucer grows less from day to day. 

Sometimes the tiny drops of water which are 
in the air gather on plants and leaves. Then you 
say, "Oh, see the dewdrops!” In cold weather 
Jack Frost comes along and chills the water vapor, 
and it changes into soft snowflakes. Sometimes 
the frozen vapor gathers on grass and leaves and 
on the windows in your house. Then you cry, 
"Oh, look at the frost! ” Has Jack Frost ever 
painted beautiful pictures on your windows? 

Water vapor is always rising from the oceans 
and lakes and ponds and rivers, and even from 
the mud puddles. Sometimes the air gets very 
full of the tiny particles of vapor; sometimes a 
cold wind comes along and chills it so that it can¬ 
not hold the water vapor. Then the raindrops 
come pattering down. The rain washes the dust 
from the leaves of trees and plants and gives the 
thirsty roots a drink. So many of the drops sink 


RAIN AND WHAT IT DOES FOR US 67 

into the earth that they make brooks and rivers 
which flow along in dark beds underground. 
Sometimes the brooks bubble out of the ground 
in springs. Did you ever drink the pure cold 



GETTING A COOL DRINK FROM A SPRING 


water of a spring? Many raindrops run away 
into brooks and rivers which flow on the surface 
of the ground. But wherever they go they are all 
sure to get back sometime to their ocean home to 
sparkle in the sunshine and dance on the waves. 

How many uses of water can you name ? Write 
them on paper and see who will get the longest list. 



HOW BROOKS AND RIVERS HELP MEN 


Is there a brook near your school? Have you ever 
seen a river? What is its name? Where is it? 

After a hard rain what color is the water in the brooks 
and in the gutters? What makes it this color? If there 
were no sewers under the streets, what would become of 
the water in the gutters? Have you ever seen a place 
where the soil has been washed away? What did it? 
What has become of the soil ? Do you ever find fine mud 
in the gutters? Where has it come from? What moved 
it from the place where it used to be ? 

Hear the river singing as it flows along: 

I work and sing, and sing and work, in rain and sunny 
weather, 

And man could never get along if we did not work together. 

Brooks and rivers wash away soil and rocks 
and carry them along in the water. They rub the 
rocks against one another and against the banks 
and the bed, and grind them finer and finer. Soon 
the water looks very muddy. 

The little brooks flow into some larger river, 
carrying their loads of sand and mud with them. 
When it rains hard, the brooks are very full. Their 

waters are muddy with the soil they are carrying. 

68 



HOW BROOKS AND RIVERS HELP MEN 69 


A GEOGRAPHY LESSON OUT OF DOORS 
See how the brook made by the rain has worn away this banking. The 
water has carried the soil far away and left the stones behind. Why 
did not the water carry the stones as far as it did the soil ? 

Soon the river cannot hold all the water that 
the brooks are bringing. It rises so high that it 
overflows its banks and begins to spread out over 
the land. It cannot carry its load of mud any 




70 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


longer, and so some of it is dropped on the level 
fields along its banks. 

Because the river floods the plain that borders 
it, we call the land a flood plain. The mud which 
the river drops on its flood plain makes the soil 
rich. Farmers can raise good crops on it. You 
will read later about Ali, who lives on the flood 
plain of the great river Nile. 

The river does not drop on its flood plain all the 
mud which it carries. It takes some of it to its 
mouth and drops it.on the low, level land there. 
We call this land a delta plain. 

Flood plains and delta plains are level and are 
made of fine, rich soil. The very best farms in all 
the world are on the flood plains and delta plains 
of great rivers. 

After a hard rain see if you can find a little 
brook making its flood plain or its delta plain. 



AT THE BROOKSIDE 



























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H 














. 


































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•* 






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* 




4 

\ 






MAKING THINGS GROW IN A DESERT 


What would happen to the plants in your schoolroom 
if you should forget to water them? How does the grass 
on lawns and in parks look when no rain falls for a long 
time? Tell some other things which rain does for us. 

Plants and trees cannot live without water any 
better than you can. In many parts of the world 
Nature sends the raindrops down to water them. 
But there are some places where it never rains, 
and other places where so little rain falls that the 
soil is very dry nearly all the time. Plants and 
trees cannot grow in such dry places. 

It sometimes happens that men want to raise 
grains and fruits and vegetables in one of these 
dry places. They may wish to build villages and 
towns there. So they study and work to see if 
there is any way in which they can bring water 
for their crops. 

If there is a river not too far away, the men 
build a dam to hold back some of its water, thus 
making a great pond or lake called a reservoir. 
Then the men build canals and ditches to carry 
the water from the reservoir to their fields. 

Every few days they let the water flow between 

71 



72 HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 

the long rows of plants in their fields and the 
trees in their fruit orchards. The water and the 
warm, sunshiny days make the crops grow well. 


IRRIGATING A FRUIT ORCHARD 

Imagine you are a drop of water in one of these ditches. Tell where 
you came from, how you reached this place, and why you are needed 


This way of watering crops is called irrigation. 
There are many farms in the western part of our 
country which are watered by irrigation. 



THE POWER OF FALLING WATER 

Are there any brooks or rivers near your home? Are 
they swift or slow? What makes a brook flow swiftly? 
Where do we find slow, winding brooks ? Have you ever 
built a dam across a brook? What happened after the 
dam was built? 

When brooks and rivers flow swiftly or drop 
in falls over steep places, they have a great deal 
of power. You have read how they push rocks 
along and wear away their beds and banks. 

Long ago people did not know much about steam 
and coal and electricity. They built their mills by 
the side of a brook or river. The swift water fall¬ 
ing on the mill wheel turned it round and round. 
The wheel was connected by belts with machinery 
inside the mill. When the mill wheel turned, it 
moved the machinery that ground the grain. 

Some mills are run today by water power, but 
many more are run by steam or electricity. It 
takes coal to make both steam and electricity. Our 
coal supply is growing smaller each year. When 
it is gone, there will be no more for us to use. 

Today men are making the power that is in fall¬ 
ing water do some of the work that coal has done 

73 


74 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


for us. There are many swift rivers with water¬ 
falls and rapids in our country. If we use the 
power in these falling waters instead of so much 
coal, our coal supply will last many years longer. 



AN OLD GRIST MILL 


5) Keystone View Co., Inc. 


The falling water turned the mill wheel round and round, and thus 
moved the heavy flat stones between which the grain was ground 


So people are harnessing our waterfalls and using 
their power to produce electricity. They carry the 
electricity on wires for many miles to light streets 
and houses, run cars, and move machinery. 

Name some things for which electricity is used. 



THE FISHERMAN 

What kinds of fish have you ever eaten ? What kinds 
of canned fish does your mother buy in stores? Where 
do oysters, clams, and lobsters live ? Why are these called 
shellfish? Did you ever catch a fish to eat? What kind 
was it? 

Make a chart of pictures of different kinds of fish. 
Soak off labels from cans of fish and mount them on an¬ 
other chart. How many kinds of fish have you on both 
charts? Visit a fish market and see if you can name the 
kinds of fish for sale. What is the largest fish there? 

Fishermen, as well as farmers, give us many 
things to eat. Some fishermen go on long voyages 
far out on the ocean to catch cod and mackerel. 
Sometimes they are out in terrible storms. The 
waves are so high that they break over the ship. 
On winter trips the water freezes, and everything 
on the ship is covered with ice. 

Cod fishermen use lines that are sometimes a 
mile long. Many short lines with hooks and bait 
hang from the long line. The men put out from 
the vessel in small boats to fix the lines or to get 
the fish that have been caught. Sometimes when 
they are out in the boat they are caught in a fog. 
It is so thick that they cannot see the other boats 

75 


76 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 



TWO YOUNG FISHERMEN 

or tell where their ship is. Fishermen are some¬ 
times in great danger when they are lost in a fog. 

Icebergs are another danger. An iceberg is a 
mass of floating ice many times larger than a ship. 
If an iceberg strikes a ship, it may sink it. Sailors 
keep a sharp watch for dangerous icebergs. 



THE FISHERMAN 


77 



A FISHING SCHOONER 

This is the kind of vessel in which fishermen go on trips after cod 
and mackerel. They put out from the schooner in boats called dories. 
How do they catch the fish ? 

Some fishermen work near shore. They catch 
lobsters in traps. They dig clams in the sand. 
They get oysters in the shallow water. This work 
is not so dangerous as deep-sea fishing. 







A CAN OF SALMON 


In what kind of store does your mother buy salmon? 
Does the label on the can tell you where it comes from ? 

Many salmon live in the Pacific Ocean. Point toward 
it. How long would it take you to get to it ? Should you 
travel by land or water ? In what direction should you go ? 

The next time you go into a grocery store notice 
the rows of canned salmon on the shelves. Nearly 
all the salmon we use comes from the shores of 
the Pacific Ocean. 

Salmon spend most of their lives in the deep 
waters of the ocean. In the late spring and early 
summer they leave their ocean home and swim 
up some river to a quiet lake or pool. They swim 
through swift waters and leap over falls. When 
they begin their journey, they are fat and plump; 
but when they reach the pond or lake, they are 
thin and tired. They lay their eggs and soon die. 

Many little salmon are hatched from the eggs. 
When still very young and only about an inch long, 
they begin their trip down the river to the ocean. 
Larger fish hide in the shadows and pounce upon 
them. The little salmon which escape are weeks 
and sometimes months on their trip downstream. 

78 



**L 


A LOAD OF SALMON FOR THE CANNERY 


About how many pounds do you think each salmon weighs ? They are 
larger than they appear to be in the picture. (Courtesy of Canadian 
Government Motion-Picture Bureau, Ottawa, Canada) 




8 o 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


In the deep ocean waters they make their home 
until they are fully grown. Then, sleek and fat, 
they start on their trip up the same river to the 
place where they were born. This is the time 
of the year when the salmon fishermen make their 
big catch. 

Some of the fishermen use nets, and the salmon 
get tangled in the meshes. Some use traps; the 
fish swim into them, but cannot find their way out. 
Boats near the shore are fitted with big wheels 
on which baskets are fastened. As the wheels turn 
round, the baskets dip one after another into the 
water and scoop up the fish. Indians sometimes 
spear salmon. 

The boatloads of salmon are taken to the big 
canneries near the shore. Here machines slice the 
fish, put it into cans, and fasten on the tops. Then 
the cans rollVway, like a procession of soldiers, to 
the great steam cookers. When they come out, 
they roll into their labels and then roll on to the 
packing room. 

Many carloads of salmon are shipped from the 
canneries on the Pacific shores. Ask your grocer 
if he knows where all the cans of salmon which 
he has on his shelves came from. 



A CAN OF SALMON 81 

The picture on this page shows you thousands 
of cans of salmon in a big cannery. There are 
many other salmon canneries along the shores of 
the Pacific Ocean where you could see thousands 


CANS OF SALMON IN A CANNERY 
These cans are ready to be shipped from the cannery. Do you live in 
the part of the country where the canneries are ? In what direction 
will these cans travel to get to your home ? 

more. Think what great numbers of salmon must 
be caught each year. Think, too, of the amount 
of tin needed for so many cans, and of the num¬ 
ber of men who are busy catching the fish, making 
the tin cans, and working in the canneries. 





DIFFERENT KINDS OF HOMES 

What animal homes have you ever seen? Of what 
are they made? In what kind of homes do bears live? 
rabbits? birds? snakes? frogs? horses and cows? 

Of what materials are the homes on your street built ? 
Of what other materials are homes sometimes built? 
How many families are living in your house ? How many 
families live in the largest house you ever saw? 

Can you think why houses in dry lands are built with 
flat roofs, and why most of those in countries where rain or 
snow falls have roofs which slant ? 

Everybody has a home to live in. Some homes 
are very different from others. Most homes in the 
country are surrounded by green fields and pas¬ 
tures and trees. Homes in towns and villages 
have pleasant lawns and gardens. In large cities 
there is no room for such things. The houses are 
crowded together near the sidewalks. 

Some houses are big enough for only one family. 
Others are very large. In great cities dozens of 
families live in one building. 

Some of the Indians in the dry part of our coun¬ 
try live in houses made of bricks dried in the sun. 
Such homes would not last very long if they were 
in places where a great deal of rain or snow falls. 


DIFFERENT KINDS OF HOMES 83 

During the winter the Eskimos in the north 
live in houses built of rocks or snow and ice. In 



© Underwood & Underwood 

A HAPPY HOME IN OUR OWN COUNTRY 


These children are having an interesting time at home playing 
parchesi. What games do you play at home? 


the summer they live in tents made of skins. 
In hot lands houses are built of leaves and grass. 
Little Nakla in the desert, about whom you will 






84 HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 

read later, lives in a tent. She moves often, and the 
tent can be easily taken down and put up again. 


AN ESKIMO FAMILY AND HOME 

You will read later about Alititah, our little Eskimo friend. She looks 
as if she wanted to tell us some stories about her home 

Everybody loves his home. When we are tired 
or sick or lonesome, it is good to get home to father 
and mother. In cold or stormy weather everyone 
hurries to get home. When school is out, we like 
to get home to our playthings and tools. 




WHAT OUR HOMES ARE MADE OF 


Count the wooden houses which you can see from your 
schoolhouse. Count those made of brick. Have you ever 
seen houses made of anything else besides wood and brick ? 
What is the foundation of your house made of? What 
holds the bricks together in a brick house ? 

Are there any houses, sidewalks, or streets being built 
near your home? Watch and see how the work is done 
and tell the class about it. Of what are birds’ homes made ? 
Have you ever watched a bird building its home ? 

Many houses in our country are built of wood. 
Some are built of bricks. Bricks are made of clay 
mixed with water. They are cut into the right 
shape by machines and then baked in large ovens. 
The baking makes them hard so that they will last 
a long time. Brick houses are safer than wooden 
ones, for they do not catch fire so easily. 

Have you ever seen a stone house? Different 
kinds of stone are used for building: sandstone, 
limestone, slate, granite, and marble. Are there 
buildings or monuments or steps in your town 
made of any of these stones? Can you find out 
where the stone came from? 

Has your schoolhouse a slate roof? Why is it 

85 



86 HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 

better than a wooden roof ? What is there in your 
schoolroom made of slate? 

We get building stone from quarries. Machines 
cut the hard rock into great blocks, and others lift 


A PLEASANT HOME , 

Of what is this house built ? What other materials do you know which 
are used in building houses ? in making streets and sidewalks ? 

them out of the quarry to trucks or cars. These 
carry the blocks of stone to cities where they are 
used for building. 

Have you ever seen a building made of cement or 
concrete? Cement is made of clay and limestone. 



WHAT OUR HOMES ARE MADE OF 87 

These are crushed together in big machines and 
then heated until they make a hard rock. This 
rock is ground into a fine powder, put into bags, 
and sold. 

Perhaps you have seen men working with 
cement. They mix it with water, put it on the 
wall or sidewalk, smooth it off, and leave it to 
dry. As the cement dries it hardens, and will then 
last a long time. 

Concrete is another material which is used in 
building and in laying streets and walks. It is 
made of cement mixed with rock or sand and 
stirred up with water. Are there any concrete 
walks near your school? 

See if you can find some pictures of different 
kinds of homes. Bring them to school and mount 
them on cardboard. Find out if you can in what 
country each home is. 


FORESTS AND LUMBERMEN 

What things made of wood are there in your house? 
in your schoolhouse? 

Have you ever spent a summer in the deep woods? 
Tell the class about it. 

Bring to school a leaf from each of as many kinds of 
trees as you can find and name. Bring in pictures of 
forests and lumbering for your lumber chart. 

What should we do for our desks and chairs and 
tables, our floors and doors, without the forests 
and the lumbermen who work in them? Much 
of our writing paper and the paper used in news¬ 
papers and books is made from wood also. 

It is very pleasant in the deep woods. The wind 
whispers in the tree tops, and the shadows flicker 
to and fro on the ground. It is cool, too, for the 
trees shut out the hot sunshine. 

The woods are pleasant in the winter when the 
snow covers the ground. In the cold parts of our 
country this is the time of the year when the 
lumbermen do most of their work. It is easier 
to draw the big logs out of the woods on sleds 
than on wagons. 

The horses pull the loads of logs over the snow 



PLAYING AMONG THE BIG LOGS 

























FORESTS AND LUMBERMEN 89 

and ice to the river side. When the warm spring 
sunshine breaks up the ice in the river, the work- 


LUMBERING ON LAND WHICH BELONGS TO THE UNITED STATES 
GOVERNMENT 

These men are hauling railroad ties out of the forest. Think how many 
ties are needed each year to replace the worn-out ones on our thou¬ 
sands of miles of railroad. This is one of the important uses of lumber. 
(Used by courtesy of the United States Forest Service) 

men roll the logs into the stream. Away they go 
in the swift current down to the great sawmills. 

The men who work among the big trees in the 
western part of our country use engines instead 



go 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


of horses to drag the heavy logs out of the woods. 
A chain is fastened to a log and, with a rattle and 
bang, the engine begins to work. As it winds up 
the long chain, the big log comes crashing and 
tearing through the underbrush. Soon it is loaded 
with other logs on a train of low, flat cars, and they 
start on their way to the mill. 

Buzz! buzz! buzz! buzz! How the great saws 
scream! They take off the bark and slice the 
logs into boards and planks as easily as if they 
were slicing cheese. 

It takes many years for a tree to grow. We are 
cutting so many every year that our forests are 
getting smaller. Many trees are killed by forest 
fires. When you camp in the woods, stamp out 
all sparks before you leave your camp fire. Then 
no harm will be done. 

Is there a place near your school or around your 
home where you can plant some trees? This is 
a splendid thing to do. When you grow up, you 
can enjoy their beauty and shade. They will give 
pleasure also to many other people. 


THE FUEL WE BURN 

What do you burn in your kitchen stove ? in your fire¬ 
place? in your furnace? How do coal and wood get to 
your city? Is gas made in your town? Do people burn 
anything else besides wood, coal, and gas? Watch the 
freight trains that pass through your city and count the 
coal cars. 

Long ago people had no stoves in their houses. 
They burned big logs of wood in fireplaces like 
the one which you saw in the picture on page 2. 
In very cold weather they had to sit near the fire¬ 
place to keep warm. The women did their cook¬ 
ing over the open fire and their baking in big brick 
ovens built into the chimney. 

Most of the people in cities now burn coal 
or gas. Most gas is made from coal. There are 
places in our country where people use natural 
gas, which comes from the ground. Some people 
burn oil which is found underground. This oil is 
called petroleum. 

Coal comes from mines in the earth. Men dig 
great openings, called shafts, down into the mines. 
These shafts are hundreds of feet deep. The coal 

is lifted out of the mine on elevators and the 

91 


92 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


miners go down on them to their day’s work. 
Some mines are entered through tunnels, and the 
coal is brought out on cars. 

Let us go down into a mine. We stand close 
together on the elevator. As it plunges swiftly 
down through the darkness we catch our breath. 

Here we are in the mine. See the electric lights 
shining in the long tunnels. The walls and floors 
and ceilings are of coal and rock. Here comes a 
car loaded with coal. It is run by electricity. In 
some mines the coal cars are pulled by horses and 
mules. Their stables are down in the mine. Some 
of the animals have never been up into the sunlight. 

Let us walk out where the miners are working. 
Here is one drilling a hole in the hard coal. He 
puts in some explosive, lights a fuse, and then 
hurries away. Hark! did you hear that explo¬ 
sion ? Let us go back and see what has happened. 
The blast has torn down a lot of coaLfrom the wall. 
A workman is breaking it up and loading it on a 
car. Then he starts it toward the shaft, where it 
is lifted on the elevator to the surface. 

There are different kinds of coal. The hard 
kind is called anthracite. After anthracite coal is 
mined, it is taken to a building called a breaker. 



THE FUEL WE BURN 93 

Here it is broken into different sizes, and the rock 
which is mixed with it is sifted out. Many people 
burn anthracite in their stoves and furnaces. 
Most of our anthracite comes from Pennsylvania. 


AT WORK IN A COAL MINE 

These miners are hundreds of feet below the surface of the ground. 
How did they get down there? Notice the walls and the ceiling of 
the tunnel. Of what are they made ? 

Many states have beds of softer, or bituminous, 
coal. Find out which kind you burn in your house. 
Which kind is burned in the factories in your city? 
Which kind of coal makes the blackest smoke? 



WHAT IS COAL? 

What kinds of coal did you read of in the last story? 
Can you spell these two long names? Spell the name of 
the state from which anthracite coal comes. Bring to 
school for your collection a piece of each kind of coal. 
Perhaps you can find a piece which has on it a print of a 
leaf or fern like that in the picture on the next page. 

Do you like fairy stories? In the story of 
Cinderella it was a fairy who turned the pumpkin 
into a coach, and the mice into prancing horses. 
She turned Cinderella’s rags into a lovely dress. 
Do you think that this story is true ? 

Nature is more wonderful than any fairy, and 
her stories are true. She has written them in the 
brooks and rocks and soils. Men have learned 
to read many of these stories. One of them is 
about coal. 

Many, many ages ago, long before people lived 
on the earth, beautiful trees and plants grew where 
the coal beds are now. The weather then was hot 
and damp, and the trees and ferns grew very large. 

Then, as now, parts of the earth’s crust on which 
we live were rising very, very slowly. Others were 
slowly sinking. Where these deep forests grew, 

94 


WHAT IS COAL? 


95 


the land sank, and water covered the ground. The 
trees and the plants died, and the dead trunks 
and branches and leaves fell in thick layers. The 



FERNS IMPRINTED ON PIECES OF COAL 
When this coal was being made, some ferns were pressed firmly and 
smoothly against the hardening mass. Thousands of years later the 
coal was mined, and we can see the exact form of the ferns which grew 
long ago in a Pennsylvania valley 

brooks and the rivers brought down soil in their 
muddy waters, and very slowly the tree trunks 
and plants were buried under it. 

Then other forests grew and died and were 



96 HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 

buried in the same way. This happened several 
times. Under the thick layers of mud which 
covered them, the trunks of the fallen trees, the 
branches, the leaves, and the plants very, very 
slowly decayed, or rotted. 

As the weight of the mud above them grew 
heavier and heavier the remains of the forests were 
changed, little by little, into coal. It took long, 
long ages for this to happen. Is not the changing 
of plants into coal more wonderful than chang¬ 
ing pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses? 

When the mountains were made, the crust of 
the earth was wrinkled and folded. That is what 
mountains are—great wrinkles in the earth’s 
crust. While the mountains were being made, the 
coal layers were pressed harder and harder and 
lifted nearer the surface. As time went on the 
rains and frosts and the brooks and rivers wore 
away much of the soil and rock which covered the 
layers of coal. Thus men were able to get at them. 

What should we do if Nature had not buried 
the forests, changed them into coal, and then lifted 
the coal beds so that we could use them? 

Imagine that a fairy has changed you into a 
piece of coal. Tell the class the story of your life. 


OIL AND GAS 


Have you ever seen a man putting grease and oil into 
his automobile? Have you ever noticed an engineer on 
the railroad greasing and oiling his engine? What other 
machines have you seen being greased and oiled? Why 
is this done? What do we buy to run our automobiles? 
What kind of oil is burned in lamps? 

In certain parts of our country there are many 
people who do not heat their houses with wood or 
coal or gas. What do you suppose they use? It 
is one of the treasures which Nature has stored 
in the ground, and it is called petroleum. This is 
used also as a fuel in factories and to run engines 
and ships. 

In many places this thick, dark oil fills the little 
spaces in the rocks deep underground. Men drill 
wells and put down pipes into the beds of petro¬ 
leum to bring it to the surface. Sometimes the oil 
shoots into the air like a great fountain. More 
often it has to be pumped up. 

You would never guess that petroleum could be 
made to give us so many useful things. When it 
is heated, lighter oils are taken from it. First of 
all, there is the gasoline which we use to run the 

97 


98 HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 

engines in our automobiles, motor boats, and air¬ 
planes. Then there is the kerosene which so many 
people burn to light their homes. The thicker, 
darker oil that is left after these oils have been 
taken out makes a good fuel. People who live in 
parts of the country where petroleum is found 
use it to heat their houses. It is carried for miles 
underground to mills and factories and used for 
fuel. Many ships burn petroleum instead of coal. 

Most of the oils and greases that are used to 
make engines and machines run smoothly come 
from petroleum. The white paraffin that your 
mother puts over her jelly tumblers is made from 
petroleum. It would take a whole book to tell 
about the useful things that we get from this oil. 

In and near the places where petroleum is found, 
gas is also often hidden in the ground. Because 
Nature made it, it is called natural gas. Men drill 
wells for the gas much as they do for petroleum. 
They pipe it to towns and cities and use it for 
heating and lighting. 

We use a great deal of coal and a great deal of 
oil. Men who know tell us that some day there 
will be none left to burn. What shall we do then ? 
Perhaps we shall find out how to make the sun’s 


OIL AND GAS 


99 


rays give us heat for our houses and factories. We 
shall surely make more use of electricity. What 
do we use electricity for now? Why should we 
be careful not to waste our coal and petroleum? 



© Ewing- Galloway 

AN ENGINEER OILING HIS ENGINE 

Where does the oil in the engineer’s can come from? Why does an 
engine need oil ? 


See how many places you can find in your 
city where petroleum or its products are used. 

Does the gas which is used where you live 
come from the ground or is it made from coal? 



IRON, COPPER, AND SOME OTHER METALS 

What metals are used for money? for jewelry? for 
machinery? What is there in your schoolhouse made of 
iron or steel ? in your home ? What things of iron or steel 
does the farmer use? the fisherman? the lumberman? 
the miner? the carpenter? the mason? Are there any 
mills in your city where iron is manufactured? 

There are many, many minerals found in the 
world. Some of these are called metals. We get 
metals, such as iron, copper, zinc, lead, gold, silver, 
and nickel, from mines. Most of these mines are 
deep in the earth like the coal mine of which 
you read. 

Metals are usually found in rocks, and the rocks 
which contain them are called ores. 

Iron is one of the most important metals in the 
world. We could not live as we do if we had no 
iron. Without iron how should we make the 
wonderful machinery in our mills and shops and 
factories? How could we get along without iron 
for nails and locks and hinges, for plows and ships 
and engines, for wire and rails and cars, and many, 
many other things? 

There are wonderful iron mines in our country. 

IOO 


IRON, COPPER, AND OTHER METALS ioi 

Some, as you have learned, are deep in the earth 
as the coal mines are. There are other places where 
the iron is mixed with the rock and soil much 
nearer the surface of the earth. Here it is mined 


The man operating this machine let the shovel down against the bank 
to pick up a load of ore. He lifted it and swung the long arm around 
until the shovel was over the empty car. Then he opened the great 
jaws to let the ore fall into the car 



© Ewing Galloway 

A STEAM SHOVEL AT WORK 


in great open pits. Steam shovels, such as you 
see in the picture, scoop up big mouthfuls of the 
reddish, rusty-looking soil and drop it into the 
open freight cars which are waiting to be loaded. 





102 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


Iron mixed with the rock and soil as it comes 
from the earth is called iron ore. It takes many 
long freight trains and big vessels to carry the 
iron ore to the large cities. Here in great stoves, 
called blast furnaces, the iron is melted and sepa¬ 
rated from the dirt and other impurities. This 
is called smelting. After iron is smelted it can 
be made into things which we need. Much of it 
is made into steel. This is harder and stronger 
than iron and is used for many manufactures. 

See how many things made of iron and steel 
you can count on the streets and in the store 
windows. Get as long a list as you can. 

Copper is another very important metal. We 
get copper chiefly from deep mines somewhat like 
coal mines. Like iron ore, the copper ore has to 
be melted and the copper separated from the 
impurities which are in the ore. 

Perhaps someone in the telephone or telegraph 
office can tell you how many miles of copper wire 
are used in your city in carrying messages. Think 
of the many, many towns and cities in our country 
and in other countries where copper wire is used 
in this way. You can see how very necessary it is 
that a great deal of copper should be mined. 


HOW WE USE RUBBER 


Count the automobiles which you see on your way home 
from school. Of what are their tires made? 

What things made of rubber have you in your house? 
What things made of rubber can you buy in a drug store ? 
What do you wear which is made of rubber? 

How should we get along without rubber ? 
Think of the millions of tires for automobiles and 
trucks which are made every year! Where does 
all this rubber come from? Your rubbers and 
raincoat are soft and smooth; tires are hard and 
strong. It is hard to believe that the rubber of 
which these things are made is the milky juice 
of a tree. 

The trees from which we get rubber grow in 
the hot part of the world. We used to get all our 
rubber from wild rubber trees which were scat¬ 
tered through great forests of other kinds of trees. 
To make it easier to collect the juice from which 
rubber is made, men have planted millions of 
rubber trees on plantations. Most of our rubber 
now comes from these rubber plantations. 

The workmen go out in the morning and cut 

little gashes through the bark of the rubber trees. 

103 



104 HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 

They hang little cups beneath the cuts which 
they have made. The milky juice, which is called 
latex, drips slowly from the trees into the cups. 


ON A RUBBER PLANTATION 

These workmen are collecting the juice from the rubber trees which 
they have tapped on this plantation. Why were the gashes made in 
the bark of the trees? 

Later in the day the men collect the latex and 
carry it to the building where it is prepared. Here 
workmen pour it on hot tables. The heat makes 




HOW WE USE RUBBER 105 

the latex harden, and it is pressed into thin sheets 
of rubber. These are rolled up and removed, 
and another layer of the latex is poured on the 


MAKING TIRES FOR AUTOMOBILES 
There are millions of automobiles in our country. Think how much 
rubber is needed for all the tires which must be manufactured. How 
many other things made of rubber can you count ? 

hot tables. This soon forms another sheet of 
rubber, which is rolled up and taken away by 
the workmen. Then the tables are ready for 
another layer of the milky juice. 




106 HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 

The workmen who prepare the latex which 
comes from the wild trees in the forests of Brazil 
and other countries work in quite a different way. 
A rubber gatherer here walks for miles through 
the forest collecting the rubber juice from the 
little cups which he had hung on the trees. 

He carries the juice to his hut and makes a fire 
on the ground. He uses nuts which he has gathered 
for his fuel. These make a thick smoke. Then 
he fixes a stick over the smoky fire and pours some 
juice over it. As it hardens he pours on a little 
more juice. He does this until he has a large ball 
of hardened rubber. 

Many things have to be done to the rubber after 
it is brought from the hot lands to our factories. 
It must be prepared so that it will not melt in hot 
weather or crack when it is cold. Men studied 
and made experiments for many years before they 
found out how to treat rubber to make it so useful. 

How many ways can you think of in which 
rubber is different from cotton? 


MANUFACTURING 


Are there any mills and factories in your city? What 
is manufactured in them? What becomes of the articles 
made in them? What things that the factories need are 
brought to your city? How do they get there? Where 
do they come from? What difference would it make to 
you if all these things should stop coming into your 
city? 

What do you wear that is made in mills and factories ? 
What do you eat? What do you use? 

Bring in for your school collection samples or pictures 
of things which are manufactured in your city or in the 
towns around. 

We have visited cotton plantations, cattle and 
sheep ranches, and great wheat farms. We have 
seen lumbermen and fishermen at work. We have 
watched miners getting out coal and iron, and 
we have learned of many other useful minerals. 

The cotton as it comes from the plant is of little 
use to us. We cannot build houses of the heavy 
logs as they lie in the forest. We cannot take the 
rubber juice as it comes from the tree and make 
it into raincoats. We cannot use the dirty, greasy 
wool as it comes from the sheep. The skins of 
cattle and sheep and goats do us no good until 

107 



108 HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 

they are made into leather. A mass of iron ore 
in the mine is of little use there. What could we 


IN A GREAT WOOLEN MILL 

This is a room in a woolen mill. Wool as it comes from the sheep is 
dirty and greasy and is first washed in hot soapy water. Then it is 
sorted and sent into other rooms. These men are sorting wool 

do with it? Before we can use all these things 
they must be manufactured into useful articles. 

Long ago, when a man killed his cow he pre¬ 
pared the leather from the hide. Then he cut out 










MANUFACTURING 


iog 


the pieces for his shoes and sewed them together. 
It took him a long time to do this work, and the 
shoes which he made were stiff and uncomfortable. 

Now cattle and sheep are killed in great build¬ 
ings at the rate of several thousand a day. Their 
skins are sent to tanneries and made into soft 
leather. This goes to the shoe factories, where 
workmen cut it up, and wonderful machines sew 
and hammer and smooth and polish it until hun¬ 
dreds of pairs of shiny, well-made shoes come 
tumbling into the packing room. Here they are 
put into boxes and sent all over the world. 

How could we get along without our mills and 
factories and foundries and creameries which 
manufacture for us the things we eat and wear 
and use? If you lived like Robinson Crusoe and 
had to make everything for yourself, what things 
should you have to do without? 


TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION 


What goods come by train into your city? What are 
sent away in trains? Are any goods brought or taken 
away in any other way ? 

What goods have you seen being carried through your 
streets? Where do they come from? Where are they 
going? What things sold in stores in your city come 
from across the ocean? How did they get here? 

If a storekeeper were in a hurry to get some goods from 
another city, how could he send the order for them? 
Suppose the city was across the ocean, what would be 
his quickest way of getting a message there? Would it 
be possible for him to get word to a ship part way across 
the ocean? 

Many of the things which we use come from 
long distances. The goods on the shelves in the 
grocery store and the meat in the market have been 
brought to us from other parts of our own coun¬ 
try and from countries across the water. The cloth 
and ribbons and dresses and shoes and other things 
which the merchant has in his store may have 
come from places hundreds and even thousands 
of miles away. The iceman has to get his ice, the 
coal dealer his coal, and the manufacturer the 
machines and the goods for his factory. 

no 


TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION hi 

The things which are made in mills and fac¬ 
tories would be of little use to people if they could 
not get them. Articles made by people in other 
countries would do us no good if they remained 


* 



MODERN METHODS OF TRANSPORTATION 
What method of travel is the fastest? Which is the most used by- 
people? How is the most freight sent? 

on the other side of the great oceans. If we could 
not get them to the place where we live, it would 
make little difference to us if dresses and ribbons 
and shoes and coats were made by the millions 
in some city hundreds of miles away. If a friend 








112 


HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 


wrote you a long letter, it would give you no 
pleasure if there were no way to send it to you. 



TRANSPORTATION IN A SMALL RUSSIAN VILLAGE 

There are other and better ways of carrying goods in Russia than this 
way. In some of the small villages there are no railroads or good roads, 
and the people have to depend on their own strength to carry goods 
from place to place. This is true in many backward countries 


Now you are thinking how very useful our ships 
and trains and motor trucks are. How different 
our lives would be if we did not have them! The 
farmer would raise no more wheat than he could 
use himself if he could not send it to people who 



TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION 113 

needed it. Men would not build mills and fac¬ 
tories if they could not send what they manufac¬ 
tured in them to people who live far away. There 
would be no large cities if everybody had to live 
on farms and raise their own cattle and hens and 
grain and fruit and vegetables. 

Buying and selling is called trade or commerce. 
The business of carrying goods from one place to 
another is transportation. 

People carry, or transport, goods in different 
ways. Negroes in Africa carry rubber, nuts, and 
ivory on their backs for many miles. In parts 
of their country the Chinese carry heavy packs of 
tea in this way. In some lands people use oxen, 
camels, donkeys, dogs, and reindeer to carry or 
draw loads. 

We use vessels and trains and motor trucks for 
transportation. Great ships bring us goods from 
other countries. They carry our cotton and wheat 
and meat to people in other lands beyond the 
wide ocean. We are beginning to use airplanes to 
carry passengers and mail. Sometime they will 
carry much freight also. 

In what ways have you ever traveled? 


WHY WE NEED LAWS 

What man is at the head of affairs in your city? In 
what building is his office ? What other offices are in this 
building? Who owns this building? Who built and paid 
for it? 

Who make the laws in your town? What are some of 
these laws? Why do we need to have laws? Who sees 
that the laws are obeyed? Who cares for the streets in 
your town? the electric lights? the water supply? the 
schools? What other officers are there in your town? 
What do they do? Which of all these duties should you 
like best to do? 

When people first began to live in settled homes, 
they began to own property. It may have been 
sheep and goats, furs and skins which they got 
from the wild animals, palm trees which bore dates 
for food, camels which carried loads on long desert 
journeys, or tools with which they did their work. 

When men began to own things, they had to 
make laws to protect them. They had to see that 
these laws were obeyed. 

In our towns and cities we have many things 
to make us comfortable, such as water, lights, wide 
streets, smooth sidewalks, and good schools. We 
cannot get all these things for ourselves, so we 



WHY WE NEED LAWS 115 

pay men to provide them for us. We want also 
to be protected against fire and floods and thieves 
and other dangers. To make our lives and the 


© Keystone View Co., Inc. 

ELECTRIC-POLE MEN AT WORK 

These men are repairing the damage caused by a great storm. What 
harm would be done if they did not do their work well ? 

things that we own safe we have to have laws. 
We pay men to make them and to see that people 
obey them. We have laws to protect us and pro¬ 
vide for things that we need in cities and towns, 
we have state laws concerning things that affect 






ii6 HOME LIFE AND NEEDS 

a whole state, and we have laws made by the 
government at Washington for the whole country. 


FIREMEN AT WORK 

What other workers besides firemen are there in your city who help to 
make it a safe and comfortable place for you to live in ? 

Can you name a law of your town or city? 
one which was made for your state? one which 
was made for the whole United States ? 

Make a list of all the officers in your town. 
Why should they be honest and loyal? 





II. OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS AND THEIR WORK 

What work does your father do ? What work do other 
men who live on your street do? The work which one 
does is his occupation. Name all the occupations of which 
you can think. What ones are carried on in your city? 

We have been reading about the different occu¬ 
pations of people. Many have farms and ranches 
and raise grain, fruit, and vegetables, or cattle and 
sheep. Some are fishermen and supply us with 
food from the ocean. Some work in forests and 
sawmills. Others work in deep mines or get out 
stone from quarries. Many people work in mills 
and factories and foundries where wheat, cotton, 
wool, iron, and other things are manufactured into 
useful articles. Still others drive great ships, 
trains, and motor trucks which bring us many 
things that we need. 

All over the world people are working in these 
and other ways. Let us visit some of our neigh¬ 
bors who live in other countries and see what 
their homes are like and what work they do. 


WHERE OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS LIVE 


Do you live on a low coast land, in a valley, on a plain, 
or on a hill? You read in the story on page 68 about the 



AN ESKIMO’S WINTER HOME 

Can you think why an Eskimo does not build his winter home of wood ? 
(Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History, New York) 


flood plains and delta plains which some rivers build. Do 
you live on one of these plains? Can you see any high 
mountains from your home? Can you see the ocean? 

Our world neighbors live in many kinds of 
places. Some have their homes on high, level 
lands called plateaus. Some live on the slopes of 

i iS 




WHERE OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS LIVE 119 

mountains and some in low valleys. Some live on 
islands in the midst of the ocean. Others live on 
the flood plains and delta plains of great rivers. 


A VILLAGE IN JAVA 

How many things can you see in this picture which tell you that this 
village is in a warm country ? 

Some of the people whom we shall visit make their 
homes on the coast lands near the ocean. Others 
live on plains many, many miles inland. Some of 
them have never seen the ocean or a high hill. 









120 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 


Some of our world neighbors live in lands where 
it is always warm; others live where the weather 
is nearly always cold. Some have their homes 
where it rains many days during the year; other 
boys and girls have never seen any rain or snow. 

The kind of place in which people live makes 
a great difference in their lives. Those in cold 
lands eat different food, have different homes, and 
dress differently from those who live in hot lands. 
Those near the coast do not do the same kind of 
work as those who live many miles away from the 
ocean. The lives of the people who live on the 
highlands are unlike those who live on the plains. 


PEDRO OF THE ANDES MOUNTAINS 

The picture shows you Pedro, the Indian boy, 
and his home in the Andes Mountains in South 
America. Pedro is at the right in the picture, with 
his gay blanket wrapped around him. His mother 
wove the blanket from the wool of their sheep, 
which feed in the high pastures. She dyed the 
yarn with the juice of plants. She is now weaving 
a warm blanket for Pedro’s father. When that is 
finished she will make some cloth for a new skirt 
for herself. She has on five now. As the weather 
grows colder she may put on two or three more. 

It is a long journey to Pedro’s home. We sail 
southward many days over the great ocean. Then 
we take a train which carries us part way up the 
mountains. When we come to the end of the rail¬ 
road, we climb higher and higher. The air is thin 
up here. To get enough of it we have to breathe 
fast as if we had been running. Very likely our 
noses may bleed and we may feel dizzy and faint. 
Pedro is used to the thin air and does not mind it. 

In the daytime the sun shines hot on the moun¬ 
tains. But the thin air does not hold the heat, 

and many nights are cold enough to freeze water. 

121 



122 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

Pedro does not seem to mind the heat or the cold. 
He goes barefooted. At night he wraps his blanket 
around him and sleeps on the earth floor of his hut. 


LITTLE PEDRO AT HOME 

Nature has hidden many treasures in the Andes 
Mountains. Men have found rich beds of tin, 
copper, silver, and other minerals there. 

Up on the mountain above Pedro’s home there 
is a big tin mine. Pedro’s father carries machinery 
and food to the miners. He loads these things on 





PEDRO OF THE ANDES MOUNTAINS 123 

his llamas and drives them over the rough moun¬ 
tain trail from the railroad up to the mine. After 
the llamas are rested, he loads them with tin to 


LLAMAS WITH THEIR LOADS 

take down to the railroad station. At night he 
sleeps beside the llamas under the open sky and 
the bright stars. 

The people who live in the Andes Mountains 
find their llamas very useful. They carry loads 
over the rough, steep mountain paths, their coats 
make strong cloth, and their flesh is good to eat. 







124 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 


Great flocks of sheep feed in these mountains. 
We may happen to see some alpacas also. They 
look like llamas, but their coats are finer and softer. 
Their wool makes beautiful cloth. 

The Andes mountain system is one of the long¬ 
est and highest in the world. Many of its high 
peaks are volcanoes. They sometimes have terri¬ 
ble eruptions. In these eruptions hot ashes are 
blown into the air, and melted rock, called lava, 
pours down the mountain slopes. Sometimes the 
ashes and lava have buried cities and towns. 

Stop! did you feel the earth tremble beneath 
your feet? The trembling reminds us that we 
are in Earthquake Land. Sometimes the earth 
shakes so that churches and houses are thrown 
down and towns destroyed. 

While we are here in the Andes Mountains we 
can ride on the highest railroad in the world. We 
can sail, too, on the very highest large lake in the 
world. It has a queer Indian name, but it is easy 
to pronounce. It is Lake Titicaca. The lake is 
higher than the tops of many mountains, and its 
waters are cold and deep. 

There are no very large cities in the Andes 
Mountains. Can you think why this is so? 


LUIS, THE BOY WHO LIVES ON THE 
MEXICAN PLATEAU 

Our next visit will be on the high plateau of 
Mexico. This is in our own continent of North 
America. Mexico is south of us, but not so far 
south as Pedro’s home. 

The vessel which has taken us to Mexico leaves 
us at a city on the low, hot coast lands, and we 
take a train to climb the steep slopes to the plateau. 

You read in the last story of the rich minerals 
which Nature has stored in the Andes Mountains. 
Mexico is another mineral treasure house. Thou¬ 
sands of Indians work in the mines here getting 
out copper and silver and other metals. 

We are not going to visit the mines on this trip. 
We are going to see Luis, who lives on an hacienda. 
If you cannot pronounce this Spanish word, you 
may call it a ranch, for that is what it really is. 
Luis calls it an hacienda, for he speaks Spanish 
and not English as we do. 

Luis’s father does not own the hacienda. He 
is only a peon—a poor Indian workman. The 
ranch is owned by a rich Mexican, and hundreds 
of peons live and work on it. 

125 



A PEON’S HOME IN MEXICO 

This is Luis’s home. He is at the left of the picture, with his hat in his 
hand. Many peons in Mexico live in homes no better than this 

rubber and sugar cane grow. Some are on the 
higher slopes, where coffee trees grow well. On the 
hacienda where Luis lives thousands of cattle are 
raised. Luis’s father is a cowboy and takes long 


126 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 


There are different kinds of haciendas in Mexico. 
Some of them are down on the hot lowlands, where 



LUIS’S HOME IN MEXICO 


127 


rides in the hot sun over the plateau. He must 
see that the cattle find plenty of grass and water. 

Luis’s home is a little one-room hut. You can 
see a picture of it on the opposite page. There is 
no smooth wooden floor or pretty chairs and tables 
and pictures such as you have in your home. 

Luis is eating tortillas and beans. Should you 
like to try a tortilla? It is made of corn. The 
kernels of corn have been soaked to soften them 
and loosen their outer coats. Luis’s mother beats 
and grinds them until they are fine enough to use. 
Then she adds some water to make a dough. She 
kneads and pats the dough and rolls it out with 
her stone rolling pin until it is as thin as a cooky. 
Then she puts it on the iron griddle over the fire. 
In a few minutes it is done. Luis thinks tortillas 
are fine. What do you think ? 


TRUDI’S HOME IN SWITZERLAND 

Little Trudi lives in a high valley among the 
Alps Mountains. She can look up from her door 
and see the white peaks against the blue sky. All 
over Switzerland there are beautiful mountains, 
deep valleys, and rushing rivers. 

The Alps are Jo beautiful that many visitors 
come here to enjoy the lovely views and to climb 
the mountains. Mountain climbing is sometimes 
very dangerous. Some of the valleys are filled with 
ice thicker than your schoolhouse is high. These 
long tongues of ice are called glaciers. In some 
glaciers there are deep, narrow cracks. People 
have been killed by falling into these deep cracks. 
Sometimes masses of snow slide down the sides 
of mountains. Villages have been buried under 
these avalanches. 

People who climb the mountains must have 
guides to show them the safest paths. Trudi’s 
brother is an Alpine guide. In the summer he 
spends much of his time on the mountains. 

The large cities of Switzerland are on the plains 
and in the lower valleys. They have big stores 

and factories and parks much like our cities at 

128 


TRUDI’S HOME IN SWITZERLAND 129 

home. In some of the factories fine lace and em¬ 
broidery are made by machines. The women of 
Switzerland do a good deal of this kind of work 
by hand in their homes. In some Swiss cities 
watches, jewelry, toys, and pretty silk ribbons 
and cloth are made. 

Trudi knows little about these large cities. She 
lives in a little mountain village. Her house is 
three stories high. During the winter the cows live 
on the first floor. The hay is stored on the third 
floor. Trudi and her brothers and sister and her 
father and mother live on the second floor. 

Grass and trees grow all around the village and 
many bright flowers bloom. Higher on the slopes 
the trees grow smaller and smaller until, on the 
high peaks, there are only bare rocks and ice 
and snow. Can you think why this is so? 

There is not enough grass in the valleys to feed 
the cows in the summer and to save enough for 
the long cold winter. So in early summer the 
people drive the cows farther up on the mountains 
to feed. Trudi goes with her father and brothers. 
She lives all summer in a little house up in the 
high pasture lands. She helps make the butter 
and cheese and spends long hours watching the 


130 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

cattle to see that they do not stray too far away. 
While she is out with the cows her fingers are busy 
knitting warm socks and mittens to keep her feet 
and hands warm during the winter. 

When the cool days of autumn come she helps 
drive the cattle down to the valley. The people 
in the village watch the winding paths. They see 
the cows and their drivers and hear the tinkle of 
the cow bells. Then everybody stops work and 
makes a holiday with games, dances, and other 
good times. 

Soon the winter sets in. The cold winds whistle 
down the valley, and the snow is piled deep around 
the little houses. The boys and girls have great 
fun skiing and coasting. There is work to be done, 
too. Trudi’s father and brothers sharpen their 
knives and get out the wood which they have dried. 
Then they begin to carve the wood into different 
shapes. They make fierce-looking bears and the 
little animal called the chamois, which lives in the 
mountains. It has a pretty head and slender legs. 
They make boxes, paper-cutters, furniture, stat¬ 
ues, and other articles. Many people come from 
other countries in the summer to visit Switzer¬ 
land, and they like to buy these things. 


TRUDI’S HOME IN THE ALPS MOUNTAINS 














TRUDI’S HOME IN SWITZERLAND 131 

Trudi’s mother makes many yards of fine lace, 
which she will sell to the summer visitors. Trudi 
sits beside her mother and works on lace, too. 
When she is grown up she will be able to make as 
lovely things with her hands as her mother does. 

We buy a great deal of lace and embroidery from 
Switzerland. Some of it is made on machines in 
the big factories in the cities, and some of it is 
made by hand. Should you like to have some 
that little Trudi made in her mountain home? 


SOME NEIGHBORS WHO LIVE ON THE ROOF 
OF THE WORLD 

Our next trip will take us to the "Roof of the 
World” in Asia. The roof of your house is its 
highest part. So the Roof of the World is the 
very highest part of the earth. You would have 
to go up in an airplane more than five miles 
before you could see below you the peak of the 
highest mountain here. 

These high mountains are called the Himalayas. 
The name means the home of the snow. Do you 
think that this is a good name for them? 

Just north of the Himalaya Mountains is the 
country of Tibet. This is a high plateau with 
mountains all around it. Some parts of the pla¬ 
teau are higher than the highest mountain top in 
our country. 

You see from the picture that the people of 
Tibet look different from our friends at home. 
They belong to the yellow race, and the kind of 
country they live in does not help them to keep 
clean. They have very little water to use. In 
some places it has to be carried long distances. 
Then, too, Tibet is so high that it is always cool 

132 


ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 


133 


or cold there. If you had no warm house, no bath¬ 
room, and very little water to use, and the weather 



A FAMILY IN TIBET 

Tibet is a part of China, and the people belong to the same race as 
the Chinese. They look somewhat like them. Don’t you think so? 


was always cold, do you think that you would be 
likely to wash yourself very often ? 

Because there is so little water in parts of Tibet, 
some of the people lead wandering lives. They 
pitch their tents near a place where there is water 



134 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 


and grass for their sheep and other animals. When 
the water dries up they move to another place. 


In other parts of the country the people live in 
houses made of sun-dried bricks. They have small 



YAKS FROM TIBET 

Notice what thick, warm coats these yaks have. They need them, for 
Tibet is a cold country. In what ways are the yaks useful to the 
people who live in Tibet ? 


gardens where a little barley and a few vegetables 
grow, but they depend for most of their food on 
the animals which they raise. 

If you visited a village in Tibet, you might find 
very few men at home. Some are off tending the 



ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 135 

sheep and goats from which the people get wool, 
skins, meat, and milk. Others are hunting wild 
animals for their furs. A little gray-brown deer 
which lives on the mountains has in its body a sac 
of perfume called musk. Hunters kill the deer to 
get the musk. They sell it to traders from other 
countries. Did you ever smell this perfume or 
eat musk lozenges? 

Still other men spend their time driving heavily 
loaded ponies and sheep and yaks over the rough 
mountain trails to the border of the country. Here 
they meet traders from other countries and ex¬ 
change goods with them. 

The yak is the best friend of the people in Tibet. 
See what a warm woolly coat it has! Mrs. Tibetan 
weaves its long hair into a coarse, heavy cloth. 
This makes a good cover for the tent. She cooks 
the flesh of the yak and makes butter and cheese 
from its milk. 

The yak carries heavy loads over the steep 
mountain paths. Mr. Tibetan would find it as 
hard to get along without his yaks to help him 
as Pedro’s father would without his llamas. 


OUALDO, THE ABYSSINIAN BOY 

Oualdo lives far away on the highland of Africa. 
The name of his country is Abyssinia. Can you 
pronounce this long word? 

There is only one railroad in Abyssinia. Every¬ 
where else in the country people have to walk or 
go on horseback or muleback. In the hotter parts 
of the country they use camels. 

We must take a guide and some hunters to get 
to Oualdo’s home, for he lives a long way from the 
railroad. Off in the jungles there are lions and 
leopards and other wild animals. In some parts 
of Abyssinia elephants live. And see, off there in 
the distance some antelopes are feeding. 

Ever since we landed on the coast of Africa we 
have been steadily climbing. We have left behind 
in the lower, hotter lands the fields of cotton and 
sugar cane, the coffee trees, and the figs and olives. 
Here on the cooler, higher plains we see many 
cattle feeding, and still higher there are flocks of 
sheep and goats. 

Here we are at the village where Oualdo lives. 
What a queer place it is! It looks like a group 
of giant toadstools. The houses are round and 



OUALDO, THE ABYSSINIAN BOY 137 

are built of sticks plastered with mud which has 
hardened in the hot sun. The roofs of the houses 


OUALDO’S HOME IN ABYSSINIA 

are made of sticks which are covered with long 
grass. We call these thatched roofs. 

In Oualdo’s house there are no windows and 
only one small door. The fire is built on the 
ground in the center of the hut, and most of the 
smoke stays inside. Should you like this? 




138 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

When Oualdo eats, he sits cross-legged on the 
floor. His bread is round flat cakes. He dips one 
into the dish in front of him and scoops up some 
of the stew. When he eats meat he puts one end of 
a long strip into his mouth. Then he takes a sharp 
knife and cuts it off close to his face. Shouldn’t 
you be afraid that you might cut off your nose? 

Some of the women are working in the little gar¬ 
den patches where grain and vegetables are grow¬ 
ing. The handles of their hoes are so short that 
the women bend low over the ground as they work. 

See the beehives in the trees. The people will 
sell the beeswax and make a drink of the honey. 
The sheep and goats are feeding in the pastures. 
At night the boys will drive them into the village, 
where wild animals cannot get them. 

Many men in Abyssinia are soldiers. Oualdo’s 
father likes to ride about with his gun and sword 
better than to work. Oualdo may be a soldier, 
too, when he grows up. 

When we read about the homes of our world 
neighbors, we must not forget that our homes and 
our manners would seem just as strange to them 
as theirs do to us. What are some of the things in 
your town which would seem strange to Oualdo? 


WHAT WE SAW ON THE HIGHLANDS 


What people have we visited who live in highland 
regions ? In what continents do they live ? Describe one 
of their homes and let the class guess whose it is. 

What kinds of work do the people in highland regions 
do ? What animals live there ? What kind of weather did 
we find there? Did we find big cities in the highlands? 

We have finished our trips over the great high¬ 
lands of the world. We have visited cattle ranches 
and found flocks of sheep, goats, and alpacas feed¬ 
ing in the mountain pastures. We have seen loaded 
llamas and yaks carrying goods for their masters. 
We have heard of the treasures which are stored 
away in the earth, and have read of tin, copper, 
gold, and silver mines. 

We have seen volcanoes and heard stories of 
their terrible eruptions and of the earthquakes 
which have destroyed cities and towns. 

In our highland trips we have seen no very 
large farms of grain and fruit and vegetables. 
Most of the people raise animals of some kind. 
Their skins and thick coats, their milk and flesh, 
and their strength and sure-footedness are all 

very useful to the people who own them. 

139 


140 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 


We have seen no very large cities on the high¬ 
lands with busy mills and factories, or great rail¬ 
road stations with dozens of trains entering and 
leaving every day. There were few railroads among 
the mountains, and in many places we made trips 
on horseback or tramped long distances between 
villages. 

Most of the time we wore our thick coats and 
sweaters. Can you shut your eyes and see the 
bare, rocky slopes and the snow on the tops of 
the high peaks? Do you remember how cold it 
was when we visited Mr. and Mrs. Tibetan on 
the Roof of the World and how the water froze 
nearly every night around Pedro’s home in the 
Andes Mountains? 

Now we are going to visit some people who live 
on the great low plains of the world. We shall 
find things there very different from what they 
are on the highlands, and we shall see many 
interesting sights. 

Let us pack our trunks at once so that we may 
be ready to begin our travels over the plains. 


JUAN’S FARM ON THE PLAINS OF 
SOUTH AMERICA 

Here we are again in South America, but in a 
part which is very different from the cold highland 
where Pedro lives. We are going to visit Juan, who 
lives on the great plains of Argentina. The land 
is as level as a table here. There are no hills or 
mountains in sight. If we travel west far enough 
we can see the white tops of the Andes Mountains. 

Great rivers flow slowly through the plain. The 
steamer which brought us to Argentina stopped at 
the mouth of one of these rivers. We landed at 
the city of Buenos Aires. It is the largest city in 
all South America. It has fine wide streets, splen¬ 
did buildings, beautiful parks, and a big harbor, 
where many ships come. As we travel over the 
plain to Juan’s home we shall find many things 
with which to load the vessels. 

See, the train is running between great fields of 
wheat! The grain is ripe, and it rises and falls 
in the breeze like the waves of the ocean. The 
farms are large, and the big harvesting machines 
are like those which we saw in our own country. 
Some of them were made in the United States. 


14 ' 


142 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

Now we are riding between large fields of corn. 
How tall the stalks are! You could play hide and 
seek under the long, rustling leaves. 

Soon we come to fields where pretty blue 
blossoms wave on slender stems. These are 
flax plants. You remember that your linen hand¬ 
kerchiefs and tablecloths are made from flax. 

The farmers on the plains of South America 
raise flax for its seeds rather than for its fiber. 
The seeds contain an oil which is pressed out and 
used in making paint and varnish. 

Juan’s home is still farther out on the plain. 
He is coming to meet us on his pony. He is glad 
to see us, but he cannot understand what we say. 
Neither can we understand him, for he speaks the 
Spanish language. People from Spain discovered 
these lands in South America and came here 
to live. So the people here speak their language. 

In a few years Juan is going to Europe to study 
in a famous university there. Then he will learn 
to speak several languages. 

Juan’s house is a fine one, as large and beautiful 
as many in our own country. The family live out 
here in the country only a few months in the year. 
Then they go to their city home in Buenos Aires. 



JUAN’S FARM IN SOUTH AMERICA 143 


© Underwood & Underwood 

ON THE PLAINS OF ARGENTINA 

Long before we get to Juan’s ranch we see the cattle, which belong to 
his father, feeding on the plains 

The farmers in this part of South America raise 
many cattle and sheep. There are few barns on 
the ranches, for the animals live out of doors all 





M 4 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

the year. Some sheep ranches are very lonely 
places, and for days at a time a shepherd sees no 
one but the sheep and his dog. 

Many men work on the cattle ranch which 
Juan’s father owns. Some are cowboys like those 
whom we saw on ranches in the United States. 
Many of the workmen are Italians who have come 
to South America to live. On the ranch we look 
into the great sheds where corn, wheat, and flax¬ 
seed are stored, and we watch the long arms of the 
windmill moving in the breeze. If we were near 
enough we could read on one of its arms the words 
"Made in the U. S.A.” What does this mean? 

Now that we have seen so many farms on the 
plains of South America, we know what the steam¬ 
ers at Buenos Aires carry away to other countries. 
What do you think some of these things are ? 

This part of South America is far south of our 
own home. When the sun is high in our sky, it is 
low here. So the people of Argentina have their 
winter when we have summer. Their hot summer 
days come when we are having winter. Should you 
like to have Fourth of July come in the winter? 

If Fourth of July came in winter, in what season 
would Christmas come? Should you like this? 


SOME FRIENDS ON THE PLAINS OF EUROPE 
In Russia 

Now we are going to travel for some time in 
Europe. We shall make several visits here, for 
many European people live on the wide plains. 

First we shall go to see Olga, who is a Russian 
girl. Her home is a little one-room house in a 
small village. 

Russia is a big, big country. There are hun¬ 
dreds of villages there and thousands of little 
houses like Olga’s. The villages are often miles 
apart. Olga has never been far from her home and 
has never seen any other village but her own. 

She never tires of hearing her brother tell stories 
of the big cities of Moscow and Petrograd, and of 
the gay life, the fine buildings, and the crowds of 
people there. Her brother has been to those cities 
many times, for in the long winter when there is 
nothing to do on the little farms, he and some of 
the other young men work in the factories there. 

During the long days of summer Olga’s father 
works hard on his farm. During the winter he 
works in a little shop in the village with three or 

M 5 


146 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 


four of the older men. They make wooden spokes 
for wagon wheels. In the next village the men 
make the hubs, and in still another the rims. 



OLGA’S HOME IN RUSSIA 


i) Press Illustrating Co. 


There are large forests in Russia, and the people 
use a great deal of wood. They burn it in their 
big stoves. In dozens of villages the men make 
articles of wood, such as boxes, bowls, spoons, 
chairs, tables, and parts of wagons. 

The winters are long and cold in Russia, and 




IN RUSSIA 


147 


for months the snow lies deep on the ground. 
Should you like to take a sleigh ride over the 
white plains? The horses prance, the bells jingle, 



A RUSSIAN KITCHEN 

Notice the round samovar in which the tea is made and the big 
chimney and stove 


and Jack Frost tries very hard to get under the 
thick fur robes and nip your fingers and toes. 

A summer ride over the plains would be very 
different. Such big fields of wheat as we should 







148 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 


see! And the blue-eyed flax, too! We might al¬ 
most think that we were back again on the plains 
of South America. 


In Poland 

From Russia we travel westward over the plain 
of Poland. Many of the people of Poland are 
farmers, for the soil is rich and produces good 
crops. We see many people at work in the fields. 
Some are cutting the wheat, rye, and oats, and 
others are digging potatoes and pulling sugar beets. 

As we ride along over the wide plain we see 
Stefan at work in the fields. His father and mother 
are pulling the long rows of sugar beets, and Stefan 
is cutting off the green tops. When there is a big 
pile ready, his father will load them on the cart 
and take them to the factory in the village. You 
know what happens to them here, for you read 
•about it on page 46. More beet sugar is made 
from the sugar beets raised on the plains of Europe 
than is made anywhere else in the world. 

If we visited another part of the country we 
should find most of the people at work in mines, 
for Poland is rich in coal and iron and other 
minerals. There are wonderful salt mines here in 


IN POLAND 


149 


which men have worked for hundreds of years. 
The roofs and walls of the long tunnels are of 
solid salt. The miners have carved beautiful 



Keystone View Co., Inc. 


STEFAN’S HOME IN POLAND 


Hanging on the fence you can see bundles of flax. Later Stefan’s 
mother will prepare the fiber, spin it into yarn, and weave the yarn 
into cloth. Then she will make Stefan some new clothes 


statues and other objects from the salt, and these 
glitter and glisten as the lights fall on them. 

Poland is a very old country. People were liv¬ 
ing and working in some of its cities long before 
Christopher Columbus discovered America. All 




ISO OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

the countries in Europe are older than ours. The 
United States is only a child among nations. You 
boys and girls are going to be the men and women 
who will help our country to grow up as it should. 

The great city of Warsaw in Poland was more 
than two hundred years old when Columbus dis¬ 
covered the continent we live in. In parts of 
the city there are old buildings, narrow, crooked 
streets, and interesting market places, all very 
much as they were hundreds of years ago. In other 
parts of Warsaw there are great mills and factories, 
wide streets, and beautiful parks such as we have 
in the cities in the United States. 

In Germany 

West of Poland is Germany, where little Berta 
lives. Berta’s father thinks that there are no better 
farms anywhere in the world than on the plain of 
Germany. He tells Berta that on this rich land 
more sugar beets have been raised than in any 
other country. He tells her, too, about the grain- 
fields and the great crops of potatoes and other 
vegetables which the German people raise. 

Berta’s father once owned a farm on the low 
plains of Germany near the sea. He kept cows 


IN GERMANY 


151 

which gave him plenty of rich milk, and Berta’s 
mother made butter and cheese to sell. 

In the evening Berta likes to climb on her 
father’s knee and listen to the stories about the 
part of Germany where her uncle and cousins 
live. It is different there from anything that Berta 
has ever seen. Her uncle lives near the river 
Rhine. Berta never quite knows which she likes 
better, the tales of the old castles on the Rhine 
and the robber barons and lovely princesses who 
once lived in them, or the stories about the deep 
mines and the big cities along the river and the 
factories so close together that the air is always 
smoky and dirty. Which stories should you 
like better? 

The farm where Berta lives is near the great 
city of Berlin. Her father raises fruits and vege¬ 
tables and carries them to the city markets. 
Berta likes to go to market with him and watch 
the people buying and selling. 

One day Berta’s father took her to a very dif¬ 
ferent part of Berlin. Here the streets were very 
wide and clean and lined with lovely trees. They 
went into a beautiful park where there were merry- 
go-rounds, and wild animals in cages. Children 


152 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 



© Underwood & Underwood 

FARMING ON THE GERMAN PLAIN 

The farmers on the plain of Germany know how to make the soil 
yield good crops. See how nicely the land is cared for 

sailed on the lakes in pretty boats, and ladies and 
gentlemen rode horseback through the shady paths. 

Berta never forgot this trip, and she hopes that 
her father will take her again to visit the park. 



ON THE PLAIN OF HOLLAND 


!S3 


In Holland 

To get to the house of Jan and Mina, the Dutch 
twins, we shall sail up this narrow canal between 
the flat, green fields. It will take us to their very 
doorstep. See, there is Mina ready to greet us. 

Jan is out milking the cows. Let us go and 
watch him. All the cows are black-and-white. 
How clean they are! They look as if they were 
washed every day. They have just come home 
from the green meadows. They have had plenty 
of grass, and they give rich milk. Jan’s mother 
shows us some cheeses which she has made from 
the milk. They are round balls. Some are yellow, 
and some have been colored red on the outside. 
Tomorrow she will take them to the cheese market 
and sell them. 

Holland is a strange country. It is lower than 
the level of the sea. Then why doesn’t the water 
flow in and flood the country, you ask. It would 
if the people had not built strong walls, called 
dikes, to keep it out. They have built many canals 
to drain the land, and windmills to pump out the 
water and grind the grain. 

Mina and Jan love the winter. Then the canals 



154 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

are frozen over, and they can skate on them. Once 
they skated so far that they caught a glimpse in 
the distance of the big city of Rotterdam in 


ON THE PLAIN OF HOLLAND 

How level the land is around Jan’s home. Most of Holland is like 
this. See the cows which Jan has to milk every day. Why are there 
many canals and windmills in Holland ? 

Holland. Rotterdam is on the river Rhine, for the 
Rhine flows through both Germany and Holland. 

Most of the boys and girls in Holland are fine 
skaters. Should you like to race with them? 



IN BELGIUM 


I S5 



Ask your teacher if she will read you the story 
called "The Leak in the Dike,” by Phoebe Cary. 
It tells about a brave boy who stopped a leak 
in the dike and saved Holland from the ocean. 


JEF’S SISTER AND HIS MILK CART 

In Belgium 

Here comes Jef’s dog cart. He is taking the 
milk to town. How shiny his cans are, and how 
well the dog pulls the load! 

Jef is going to town with his sister today. His 
father is busy in the flax fields. He is pulling the 
flax and tying it up in bunches. He will put these 



156 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

to soak in the little river which flows by his farm. 
The soaking rots the woody part of the stem away 
from the fiber inside. 

The fiber will be cleaned and combed in the 
factories in the big cities. Then it will be spun 
into thread and woven into cloth. 

Some of the best linen in the world comes from 
Belgium. The people in Ireland and France also 
make much fine linen. Perhaps your mother has 
some linen which came from one of these countries. 

In France 

Ever since we started on our visit to our neigh¬ 
bors on the plains of Europe, we have been travel¬ 
ing westward. We rode through Russia, Poland, 
Germany, Holland, and Belgium. Now we have 
come to France. La Belle France, Marie calls it. 
This means Beautiful France. Marie loves her 
country and thinks that it is the most beautiful 
one on earth. Do you think that about your 
country ? 

France has lovely mountains, green valleys with 
winding rivers that connect all parts of the country, 
and rich plains covered with fine farms and splen¬ 
did cities. It has deep forests so clean and well 



© Underwood & Underwood 


MARIE’S HOME IN FRANCE 

Here are Marie and all the family, even the cow and calf, having their 
picture taken. How is Marie’s home different from yours? 



158 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

cared for that they look like parks. The people 
gather up the twigs and chips and burn them in 
their stoves. They plant more trees than they cut 
down, and they do not cut the young, growing 
trees. This is the way to keep good forests. 

Marie’s father owns a farm on one of the wide 
plains in France. It is a small farm, but he raises 
good crops on it. Marie does not live on the farm. 
All the farmers live in the village, and go out two 
or three miles every morning to their work in the 
fields, where the wheat and flax and sugar beets 
are growing. Marie and her mother like to go out 
and work in the fields, too. 

Marie’s mother is a careful housekeeper. She 
keeps the little home neat and clean. She is a 
good cook and makes soups and stews and salads 
and other foods out of things that cost very little. 
It is partly because French women are so care¬ 
ful and thrifty that French farmers live so 
comfortably. 

In other parts of France there are very different 
kinds of farms. Marie once made a long visit with 
her uncle. He owns a big vineyard. There are 
thousands of little grapevines growing in it. He 
and his sons cut the vines back and tie them to 


IN FRANCE 


iS9 


stakes not as tall as you are. Marie helped to pick 
the grapes and watched while the juice was pressed 
out and made into wine. The French people make 
a great deal of wine from the grapes which they 
raise in their vineyards, and the people drink it 
with their meals as we do milk and water. 

In the southern part of France Marie has a 
cousin who raises silkworms and sells the cocoons. 
The raw silk fiber which is unwound from them 
is manufactured into silk thread and cloth and 
ribbons. France buys a great deal of raw silk 
from other countries. In her great cities thou¬ 
sands of people work in silk factories, and many 
spin and weave in their own homes. 

In Paris we can see some of the beautiful things 
which are made of silk. Marie has visited this won¬ 
derful city and shows us many interesting places. 

What splendid shops there are and what beau¬ 
tiful things are shown in the windows! Some of 
them are all a-glitter with diamonds and other 
gems set in jewelry. Others are filled with silks 
and dresses and hats. Paris is noted all over the 
world for these things. Buyers from the big stores 
in our large cities go every year to Paris to see 
the styles and to buy things for their customers. 


160 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

The stores are not the only beautiful things in 
Paris. We love to ride on the wide boulevards, 
look at the lovely gardens, and wander through 
the shady parks. Marie shows us some of the 
famous paintings and statues in the art galleries. 
She takes us to the top of the Eiffel Tower to see 
the city below us and the river winding through 
it. We go into some of the famous churches and 
other buildings. 

Now we are so tired that we can go about no 
longer, so we sit down at a sidewalk cafe and have 
some lemonade. All around are people drinking 
coffee and wine while they rest, chat with friends, 
or watch the crowds in the streets. 

Marie loves the beautiful city of Paris, as all 
French people do. But she loves, too, her quiet 
little village, where the birds sing in the trees, and 
her father’s farm, where green things grow and 
blossom. 

Name all the children we have visited on the 
plains of Europe. In what country did each one 
live ? Of what large cities have we read ? 


VANIA’S HOME ON THE SIBERIAN PLAIN 

Now we are going to the great plain of Siberia 
in Asia. Vania lives there. He is a cousin of Olga, 
and his father and mother used to live in Olga’s 
village in Russia. They were very, very poor. 
They had to pay much money in taxes, and they 
had only a small piece of land to plant. What 
they could raise on it was hardly enough to keep 
them through the long cold winter. So they de¬ 
cided to move to Siberia, a big country far to the 
east of their old home. Several of their neighbors 
decided to move to Siberia too. So the little com¬ 
pany started. 

Vania was only a baby then and slept most of 
the time, so he did not know that he was riding 
on the very longest railroad in the world. It runs 
straight as a yardstick for miles and miles on 
the level plain. For long distances not a hill is 
to be seen. 

When the family reached the place where they 
were to live, Vania’s father built a house. This 
did not take very long, as it had only two rooms. 
In their old home in Russia there was only one 
room, but here in Siberia things were to be better. 

161 


162 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

Vania is very happy in his new home. His 
father has a good farm and some cows which give 
rich milk. He carries the milk to the creamery in 
the village. All the farmers take their milk there. 



ON THE PLAIN OF SIBERIA 

Vania’s father is plowing, and Vania thinks he is helping. What makes 
the horse look queer to us? 


Machines separate the cream from the milk, and 
then it is made into butter in great churns. 

Every morning Vania watches for the smoke 
of the butter train. Soon it comes rumbling by, 
a long train of white cars filled with butter from 
hundreds of villages. The train travels westward 





ON THE SIBERIAN PLAIN 163 

over the plain until it reaches a city in Europe. 
Here the butter is unloaded and sent to other cities. 
Much of it goes to London. Have you read stories 
or seen pictures of this big city? It used to be 
the largest city in the world. Now New York in 
our country has more people than London. 

The farmers in Siberia raise grain—wheat, 
barley, rye, and oats—on their farms. Some of 
the wandering tribes in the more unsettled parts 
have flocks of sheep and goats. In the far north 
the natives keep many reindeer. 

In parts of Siberia, far away from where Vania 
lives, there are hills and mountains. Here there 
are mines where men get coal and gold. 

The forests of Siberia stretch for many miles. 
In villages near the woods the men are away from 
home much of the time hunting and trapping the 
wolf, the sable, the fox, the marten, the ermine, and 
the squirrel. Which of these furs have you seen? 


HOW THE RIVER NILE HELPS ALI 

Today we are going to visit Ali, who lives on 
the flood plain of the river Nile. This great river 
is in Egypt, a land far away to the east across the 
great ocean. Point in the direction of Ali’s home. 

Egypt is a part of the Sahara Desert. Very 
little rain falls there, and the sun shines hot on 
the dry earth. How do you suppose that Ali is 
able to live in such a land? I will tell you. 

From the mountains far to the south of Egypt 
many streams rush swiftly down the steep slopes. 
One after another they join together and thus 
form the great river Nile. 

In these mountains it rains every day for weeks 
at a time. The rivers grow fuller and fuller. Soon 
they begin to pour their floods into the Nile. Then 
its waters rise higher and higher until they over¬ 
flow the banks and spread out over the land. 

Now Ali and all the people in his village and in 
the other villages around are very happy. They 
watch the muddy river spread out farther and 
farther over the dry fields. They know that the 
water will soak the ground and leave on it the 
rich soil that it is carrying. 

164 



ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER NILE 




















HOW THE RIVER NILE HELPS ALI 165 

At last a day comes when Ali’s father says: 
"The rains in the south are over. The river is 
beginning to lower. Soon we can plant our corn 
and vegetables and cotton.” After a few weeks 
Ali and his father begin the planting. The ground 
is wet and the sun hot. It is not long before the 
seeds begin to grow, and some of them do not need 
any more water. 

Cotton is a crop which must be watered from 
time to time. While it is growing, Ali and his father 
work many long, hot days beside the river. They 
lift the water in skin buckets and pour it into 
ditches which they have dug. Through these 
ditches the water runs to the cotton fields. 

At one place men have built a big dam across 
the river Nile. In flood time the water piles up be¬ 
hind the dam in a great pond or reservoir. When 
the plants are thirsty, water is let out of the res¬ 
ervoir. Some of it goes to parts of Egypt which 
were once desert land. Now large crops grow there. 

Egypt is an old land. For thousands of years 
the floods of the Nile have made it possible for 
people to live in this part of the desert. Ali could 
not live without the Nile. It is his best friend. 


WHAT WE SAW ON THE PLAINS 


What countries on the plains have we visited? What 
kinds of farms have we seen? What was raised on the 
farms which we passed on our way to Juan’s ranch in 
South America? In what country were these farms? 
Who lives in a village on the Russian plain miles away 
from other villages? What did we find Stefan, the Polish 
boy, doing? How did we get to the home of the Dutch 
twins? When Jan went to town with his dog team, what 
was his father doing at home? 

Of what big cities have we read? Where are they? 

We have been traveling over the great plains of 
South America, Europe, and Asia, and on the flood 
plain of the river Nile in Africa. We found many 
of our world neighbors living on farms and raising 
crops which help to feed and clothe the people in 
cities and towns. 

We heard of large cities on the plains with long 
trains in their stations. We have visited other 
large cities on the seacoast, with great ships in their 
harbors. The ships and trains bring from lands 
far away many things which the people need. 
They carry away to distant countries the goods 
which have been made in the mills and factories 


WHAT WE SAW ON THE PLAINS 167 

in the cities, and the many useful products which 
have come from the farms. 

How different are the homes of our friends on 
the plains from those which we visited on the high¬ 
lands! Most of the highland people depend for 
their food and clothing on the animals which they 
raise. Many of the men spend their time tending 
the flocks and herds or working in mines. It is 
too rough and stony and dry and cold on the high¬ 
lands for the people to have great farms and raise 
grain and vegetables and fiber plants. 

Should you rather live with one of our world 
neighbors in his highland home or with some of 
our friends on the plains? Which of these places 
should you choose for a real visit? 


NAKLA’S LIFE IN THE DESERT 

Should you like to live in a tent as Nakla does ? 
She does not need a house like yours to protect 
her from the wet and cold. On the great Sahara 
Desert, where she lives, the days are hot and rain 
seldom, if ever, comes. 

Have you ever moved from one home to an¬ 
other? Can you remember how much work it was 
and how tired it made your mother? Nakla has 
moved many times. Her mother does not think 
that it is very hard work. They roll up the rugs, 
take down the poles that hold up the tent, and 
fold up the heavy cloth of which it is made. There 
are not many clothes to pack, for they have very 
few except those which they are wearing. 

Nakla’s father and brothers load the camels. 
Nakla rides on one, and her mother on another. 
The men collect the sheep and goats, and off they 
start for their new home. This happens several 
times a year. 

Why do you suppose that Nakla moves so often? 
Perhaps you can guess if you remember that she 
lives on a desert and that her father owns sheep 
and goats which must have food and water. 


NAKLA’S LIFE IN THE DESERT 169 

Deserts are barren places where little or nothing 
grows. Some deserts are too cold for plants to 
grow, and some have no good soil. Some are too 
dry. It is on this kind of desert that Nakla lives. 

Even in deserts where no rain falls there is often 
a great deal of water under the ground. Some¬ 
times the underground water finds its way out of 
the ground in springs or little streams. Sometimes 
men dig or drill wells to get the water. 

Where there is water in a desert, trees and grass 
grow. Such a place is called an oasis. Some oases 
are small. Some are large and have hundreds of 
wells and several villages and towns. 

The great Sahara Desert is very large. It would 
more than cover our own great country of the 
United States. Few people live in the interior of 
this great desert. It is too barren, and the oases 
are too far apart. The few wandering people who 
live here are traders. They travel from one oasis 
to another buying and selling camels, salt, and 
dates. Nakla lives near the edge of the desert. 
Here the oases are nearer together and grass 
grows around them. 

Nakla’s father knows where many of the small 
oases are. He knows the time of year when there 


i7o OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

will be water in the wells and green grass around 
them. The family are going to such an oasis now. 
They will live there until the water is nearly gone 
and the grass is brown and withered. Then they 
will move to another oasis where there is water 
and green grass for the animals. 

So they begin their journey. The hot sun and 
the motion of the camel makes Nakla sleepy; 
her little head nods, and soon she is fast asleep, 
dreaming the hours away. 

The camel is the only animal which can make 
long trips over the desert. No other animal can 
go so long without food and water. The next time 
you see a camel in a circus parade, notice the hump 
on its back. The hump is made of fat. When a 
camel has a big fat hump, it can go several days 
without food. It has several stomachs and can 
store up water so that it does not need to drink 
for some days. Notice, too, the camel’s feet. 
They are big and flat and do not sink in the 
sand. For these reasons the camel is used for 
desert journeys. 

Men have finally managed to cross the desert in 
motor trucks. These go much faster than camels 
can. Soon, instead of the long, slow caravans of 


/ 



NAKLA’S HOME IN THE DESERT 








172 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 


camels, trucks will be used to carry the dates, wool, 
and hides from the oases to the seacoast. 

When her camel stops, Nakla wakes from her 
sleep. Here they are at the new home. It is 
much like the old one. Nakla is glad to see the 
palm trees, for she likes the dates which grow 
on them. 

The sun has set now, and the air is much cooler. 
The tents are soon put up, and the mats spread 
in front of them. Nakla is glad to change her seat 
on the camel for one on the mat. 

How hungry she is! How good the stew which 
is cooking over the open fire smells! Her mother 
gives her a little of it for supper. She has some 
fresh dates for dessert and some goat’s milk 
to drink. 

While the family have been eating, the darkness 
has fallen and the stars have come out. How they 
glitter in the clear sky! The silvery moon shines 
over the waving palms and the yellow sands. 

Nakla’s eyes are heavy and her little head is 
nodding. Her mother carries her into the tent and 
lays her on her bed of rugs. Good night, little 
desert sister. May you sleep sweetly in your tent 
under the twinkling stars and the silver moon. 


IN THE WET LANDS OF THE AMAZON VALLEY 

Little Nakla lives in a part of the world where 
it almost never rains. Today we are going to a 
place where for weeks at a time it rains nearly 
every day. This is in the valley of the Amazon 
River in South America. 

Every morning the sun shines brightly, but be¬ 
fore the day is over the clouds cover the sky and 
the rain comes pouring down. Soon the shower 
is over and the sun shines hot again. The water 
drips from the trees, and steam rises from the 
soaked ground. 

Each day the showers are longer. The great 
Amazon River rises higher and higher. Soon the 
banks disappear. The floods spread out over the 
land, and the trees seem to be growing out of 
the water. 

After a few weeks the showers are shorter and 
come less often. The water disappears from the 
land, and the banks of the river show once 
more. 

The air is still hot and damp. In places the 
forest is so thick that no sunshine can get through 
to dry the ground. Your knife will rust in a 

■73 


174 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 


day or two, and your gloves and shoes and other 
leather things will become moldy. 

It is very hot here, for this part of the country 
of Brazil is almost under the equator. The heat 
and the dampness make things grow very fast and 
very large. The vines and creepers have stems 
as large as a man’s arm. They climb up from the 
ground, hang down from the trees, and criss-cross 
between them. The tangle is so thick that you 
cannot get through unless someone goes before 
you and chops a path with an ax. 

Now we come to a clearing in the forest. There 
is a little hut near the bank of the river. In front 
of it a man has built a fire on the ground and is 
holding something on a pole in the thick smoke. 
You have guessed what he is doing, for you read 
about him on page 106. He is a rubber gatherer. 
He has been out in the forest gathering the milky 
juice of the rubber tree, and now he is smoking 
it to harden it. 

Besides the rubber tree many other useful trees 
grow in the forests of the Amazon valley. The 
mahogany tree is one of these. What have you 
seen which was made of mahogany? The big 
three-cornered Brazil nuts come from trees which 


IN THE AMAZON VALLEY 


i75 



grow in these forests. Have you ever eaten any 
of these nuts ? See if you can find any in a store. 


© Ewing Galloway 

ON THE BANKS OF THE AMAZON RIVER 

These are Indians who live in the valley of the Amazon River. Why 
do you suppose so few people live in this region ? The Indian in the 
picture is aiming at something with his bow and arrow. What do you 
think it may be? 


Far away from the river, in the part of Bra¬ 
zil where it is cooler and drier, there are great 



176 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

coffee plantations. Probably the coffee which your 
mother buys comes from Brazil. In other parts 
of the country there are large cattle ranches. 

Only a few people live in the wet lowlands near 
the Amazon River. Most of them are negroes 
and Indians. Some gather rubber for the white 
traders. Many of the Indians do little except 
spear fish and gather fruit for food. 

Chattering monkeys and bright-colored parrots 
live in the forest. You might not like so well 
the big snakes and crocodiles which make their 
homes here. 

Where should you rather live, with Nakla on 
the desert where it almost never rains, or in the 
Amazon valley where it rains so much? 


WITH AHTITAH IN ESKIMO LAND 


Ahtitah’s home is in the Northland where Jack 
Frost and the North Wind live. She likes the cold 
and the snow. Notice in the picture on page 178 
how fat and happy she and her little friends look. 

It is summer now in the Northland, and we en¬ 
joy picking the buttercups and violets and dande¬ 
lions. The sun is not so hot as it is where we live, 
but it rises much earlier and sets much later. For 
some weeks it does not set at all. Should you like 
such long days? You could see to read and play 
late in the evening, but you would have to go to 
bed when the sun was still shining. 

Ahtitah’s father and mother are very busy now 
catching and drying fish for the family and dogs 
to eat through the long, cold winter. They catch 
deer also and dry and smoke the flesh. Ahtitah 
likes the eggs of the wild duck which her father 
finds along the shore. 

Ahtitah lives in a tent made from the skins of 
seals and held up by big whalebones. Why does she 
not live in a cloth tent held up by wooden poles? 
Why does her father make the sledge on which 
she rides in winter of bones instead of wood? 

177 


178 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

Now the weather is getting colder. Each day 
the sun is lower in the sky. Soon it peeps up over 
the horizon for only a few hours each day. Later 
Ahtitah will not see it at all for some weeks. It 



AHTITAH AND HER FRIENDS 


will not be very dark though, for during much 
of that time the sun is not far below the horizon. 

It has snowed often for weeks. Everything 
is covered deep with ice and snow. Whenever 
Ahtitah goes out to walk she puts on her snow- 
shoes. When she rides she goes in her dog sledge. 

It is so cold that the family have moved into 





WITH AHTITAH IN ESKIMO LAND 179 

their winter home. This is built of earth and stone. 
When off on long hunting trips Ahtitah’s father 
builds a round hut of ice. On the seat of ice inside, 


AHTITAH’S MOTHER AT WORK 

Ahtitah’s father has caught some fish, and in the picture you can see 
her mother cleaning it and hanging it up to dry. They will need this 
to eat in the long, cold winter 

Ahtitah’s mother spreads the skins of bears and 
seals. Then she lights a fire to make the house 
warmer. The stove is a stone bowl with seal oil 
in it. The wick is made of dried moss. 








180 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

Ahtitah has on her winter clothes now. They 
are made of skins with the fur left on, and she wears 
two suits. The inner one has the fur next to her 
body, and the outer one has the fur on the outside. 
Her fur clothes are so warm that she does not mind 
the cold weather. She and her brother like to be 
out of doors in winter as well as in summer. They 
harness their dogs to the low sledges and have fine 
rides over the snow. They play at hunting the 
seal. Sometimes they slide downhill, shooting with 
their bows and arrows at marks in the snow. 

Ahtitah’s father is busy hunting and fishing for 
the animals which give his family food and cloth¬ 
ing. They like the flesh of the whale and the seal. 
This kind of food helps to keep them warm. 

The men make long trips over the snow to catch 
beavers, foxes, minks, and other animals which 
have thick, soft fur. Ahtitah’s father sells the 
skins to the trader. In exchange for them he may 
get some thread and needles for Ahtitah’s mother 
to sew with. They are better than bone needles. 
He may get a hatchet to help him in his work, or 
some cloth for Ahtitah’s summer dress. 

When do you think you should like to visit 
Ahtitah, in the winter or in the summer? 


SOME OF OUR NEIGHBORS OF THE BLACK 
RACE IN AFRICA 

On this trip we are going to the hot part of the 
world to visit some of our negro neighbors who 
live in Central Africa. We cross the Atlantic Ocean 
and then sail up the great Congo River. Where 
there are rapids and falls we leave the boat and 
go by train until we get to smooth water again. 
Then we take another boat. 

We sail for days through deep forests. In the 
forest on each side of the river the trees and vines 
are so thick that the sun’s rays cannot get through. 
If we left the steamer, we should need men with 
hatchets to cut a path just as we did in the 
Amazon valley. 

It rains a good deal in this part of Africa. Some¬ 
times the rivers are flooded and spread out in great 
lakes under the trees. The water drips from the 
leaves. Mosquitoes and flies buzz and sting. 

Now we leave the boat and walk through a dim 
forest path to the village where Moke lives. What 
a queer place it is! The houses are round. The 
roofs are made of leaves and grass and look like 
the tops of haystacks. The walls and floors are 

181 



182 our world neighbors 

made of mud and clay pounded until they are 
hard and smooth. The stove is a hole in the floor. 


MOKE’S SISTER AND TWO FRIENDS ’ 

There are no roads, no churches, and no schools 
in the village. Moke never saw a book, but he 




SOME AFRICAN NEIGHBORS 183 

can tell us a good deal about the plants and trees 
and animals in the country where he lives. 

He shows us the banana trees which grow around 
the village. He climbs a tree and gets some fruit 
for us to eat. Moke eats bananas raw as we do, 
but he likes them better roasted in the hot ashes 
or boiled. 

Moke likes to catch fish for his dinner in the 
stream near the village. Sometimes his father kills 
an antelope or a monkey. Then the family have 
a feast. Sometimes the children catch big ants and 
locusts and cook them in the ashes. They taste 
as good to them as roasted chestnuts or toasted 
marshmallows do to us. 

When the men of the village kill an elephant 
everyone is happy. They will have many feasts 
of elephant meat, and the trader down the river 
will pay a good price for the long ivory tusks. 

In her little garden Moke’s mother raises pea¬ 
nuts, corn, beans, and sweet potatoes. The manioc 
plant grows in nearly all the gardens. The women 
wash and dry the manioc root and grind it for 
flour. In some countries the root is used to make 
tapioca. Do you like tapioca pudding? 

Growing round the village there are tall palm 


184 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

trees which bear big bunches of nuts. These nuts 
and the pulp which covers them contain a great 
deal of oil. The men gather the nuts, and the 
women cook the pulp to get the oil. They sell 
this to the trader. He also buys the kernels of 
the nuts. These are sent to Europe and crushed 
for the oil which they contain. 

What do you suppose that Moke’s father gets 
from the trader for his palm nuts and palm oil, 
his peanuts and ivory ? Perhaps he will buy some 
bright-colored cloth for his wife to wind about her 
for a dress. For himself he would like a new knife 
to cut off the bunches of palm nuts. Moke’s sister 
will clap her hands with joy at some pretty beads 
or some wire to wind round and round her neck 
and arms and ankles. Then she thinks that she 
will look as nice as her friends do in the picture 
on page 182. 


COAST-LAND NEIGHBORS IN NORWAY 

We are going to visit some friends who live in 
Norway, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. 
They live as far north as Ahtitah does, but they do 
not have such cold weather. I will tell you why. 

In the Atlantic Ocean there is a current of 
warm water called the Gulf Stream. Did you 
ever hear of it? It comes from the hot part of 
the earth near the equator. The water in the Gulf 
Stream warms the air over it, and the winds blow 
the warmed air toward Erik’s home in Norway. 

Norway is a beautiful country. It has many 
mountains whose slopes are covered with deep 
forests. Waterfalls splash in the sunshine, and 
hundreds of lakes lie in the valleys. 

The coast of Norway is very uneven. The ocean 
waters fill long, deep inlets called fiords which run 
far into the land. Steep cliffs rise on either side. 
Behind the cliffs are high mountains. 

There is very little space between the moun¬ 
tains and the sea. You see in the picture that 
the town where Erik lives is crowded on a nar¬ 
row plain close to the water. 

What do you suppose Erik’s father does for a 

185 


i86 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 


living ? He cannot have a large farm, for there is 
little land fit for planting. There are no big pas¬ 
tures of green grass, so he cannot raise many cattle 



THE VILLAGE IN NORWAY WHERE ERIK LIVES 
How does this village in Norway differ from the town where you live? 


or sheep. There is one thing that he can do be¬ 
cause the water is so near. He can go fishing. 
Most of the men in the village are fishermen. 

Off the coast of Norway there are many islands. 
Small fish live in the water round them, and many 






COAST-LAND NEIGHBORS IN NORWAY 187 

cod and other large fish come here to feed on the 
small ones. The fishermen catch great numbers 
of cod. They catch also haddock, flounder, and 
herring. Have you eaten any of these fish? 

As we approach the village where Erik lives we 
should know that many of the men were fisher¬ 
men. We see the fishing vessels in the harbor. 
We notice the salted cod drying on the rocks 
near the shore, and we try to count the barrels 
of herring on the wharves. 

Some of the men in the village often go far out 
in the ocean after whales. Erik’s father has been 
many times on whaling trips. He is a brave sailor. 
He is not afraid of the strong winds and the high 
waves. When the ocean is very rough, Erik and 
his mother are glad to see the fishermen come 
sailing up the fiord. Many of the village people 
run down to the shore to welcome them home. 


WORLD NEIGHBORS WHO LIVE ON ISLANDS 

Get ready for a long voyage over the wide 
Pacific Ocean. In what direction is this ocean 
from you? Point toward it. 

Some of our friends of the yellow race live in 
Japan. See, Metsu is having a tea party, and she 
invites us in. We must take off our shoes before 
we go into the house. This is a Japanese cus¬ 
tom, and we should be very impolite if we kept 
our shoes on. 

The house is open so that we can see through 
to the other side. Isn’t it nice to be able to make 
the whole house into one big room? The doors 
do not swing open as ours do, but slide back. 
Some of the outside walls slide back, too. Then 
the house is like a big piazza. 

The floors are covered with clean straw matting. 
Where are the chairs and beds and tables ? Metsu 
does not use such things. She sits on the floor and 
eats from a little table, such as you see in the 
picture. It is no higher than a footstool. She 
sleeps on thick quilts on the floor, with her head 
on a wooden block. 

The great ocean lies all around the islands 



SOME ISLAND NEIGHBORS 189 

where the Japanese live. Many of the men whose 
homes are near the shore are fishermen like Erik’s 


METSU IS HAVING A TEA PARTY 

father in Norway. Metsu lives on a little farm 
away from the water. There are so many people 
in Japan and so much of the country is hilly and 
rocky that the farms are very small. 



190 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 


Off there in the valley the men are working in 
the rice fields. Some are plowing with water 
buffaloes. Both men and animals are walking 
in mud and water. Other workers are setting 
out rice plants. 

Rice does not grow well unless the ground is 
covered with water. When the grain is ready to 
harvest, the water is drained off. The people cut 
and dry the stalks and comb out the seeds. Then 
they pack the seeds in bags to be carried to the 
city and sold. Every family is careful to save 
enough rice to eat until the next harvest. 

See the long rows of tea plants on the hillsides. 
Do you remember about the tea farms around 
Wang’s home in China? Metsu likes to help pick 
the tea leaves for her father to take to the factory. 
What is done to them there (see page 42)? 

Now Metsu’s mother calls her to pick some mul¬ 
berry leaves for the silkworms. She scatters the 
tender leaves on the trays where the worms are. 
How fast they eat them! Soon they will begin to 
spin their cocoons. When they have finished, there 
will be many baskets of cocoons to sell. The fine 
silk fiber will be unwound from the cocoons, spun 
into thread, and woven into cloth. 



SOME ISLAND NEIGHBORS 191 

The vessels in the harbors of Japanese cities 
carry silk cloth and thread and fiber to countries 
across the ocean. A great deal of it comes to the 


© Keystone View Co., Inc. 

JAPANESE FISHERWOMEN 

The Japanese catch a great many fish. Why do people who live on 
islands often catch fish for a living ? 

United States. We do not raise silkworms here, 
but we make more silk thread and cloth than any 
other country. Most of the silk on the shelves in 
our stores was made in our own cities. Some was 
made in China and Japan, and some in France. 



192 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 


Do you remember the beautiful silks which we 
saw in the store windows in Paris (see page 159) ? 

Japan is so crowded that there is not room for 
all the people to live on farms. Many live in large 
cities and work in mills and factories. Most of 
these cities are on the coast and have splendid 
harbors. Large steamers carry the things which 
are manufactured in the cities to other countries 
and bring back to Japan the things which the 
people need. 

Japan is a beautiful country. It has high 
mountains and green valleys and pretty rivers 
and waterfalls. Many flowers bloom there. The 
chrysanthemum is one of the most beautiful. Do 
you know this flower? We raise many chrysan¬ 
themums in hothouses. Perhaps you have seen 
Japanese cherry trees in bloom in the early spring. 
They are very lovely. Japanese boys and girls 
think that their land is the loveliest and finest 
on earth. That is the way that girls and boys in 
every country should feel. What do you think 
about the United States? 


OUR NEIGHBORS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

There are many other islands in the Pacific 
Ocean besides those where the Japanese live. 
Some of these islands belong to the United States. 
We are going to visit the group where Pablo lives. 

Pablo is a Filipino. He belongs to the brown 
race, and his skin is darker than yours and mine. 
He goes to school every day and has learned to 
speak English. He is proud to talk in our language 
as he takes us around his village. 

First we will go out to see the people working 
in the fields of rice and sugar cane. Pablo cuts 
off a stalk of the cane and sucks the sweet juice. 
He likes it as well as you like candy. 

Pablo climbs one of the coconut trees around 
the village and gets a coconut. He breaks it open 
and gives us some of the sweet, milky water in¬ 
side. The heavy winds and the storms blow off 
many of the coconuts, and the men climb the trees 
and cut off others. They heap them up in great 
piles in the village. The people tear off the outer 
husk and then cut them open and dry the white 
meat in the sun. The dried meat of the coconut 
is called copra. This contains a very useful oil. 

193 


194 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 



Keystone View Co., Inc. 


CUTTING MANILA HEMP 
The men are cutting off the long leaves. These will be crushed to get 
out the pulp and juice and to separate the fiber from the woody part. 
The fiber will be cleaned and dried; then it will be twisted like yarn 
into great hanks, and sent all over the world to be made into rope 

Pablo helps his father fill his boat with copra 
and watches him start down the little river to the 
coast town. There a Chinese merchant will buy 




FILIPINO BOYS CLIMBING A COCONUT TREE 




















OUR NEIGHBORS IN THE PHILIPPINES 195 

the copra and send it to the big city of Manila, 
where it will be taken to the mill and crushed to 
press out the oil. 

The people who live in parts of Africa and on 
the islands in the Pacific Ocean prepare a great 
deal of copra. In some places mills have been 
built to press out the oil. In other places the copra 
is loaded on vessels and taken to countries in 
Europe or brought to the United States. We use 
millions of pounds of coconut oil every year in 
making soap, medicines, cold creams, and other 
things. Perhaps your mother may use a coconut- 
oil shampoo when she washes your hair. 

Those trees over there with the very long leaves 
are banana trees. Each one has a big bunch of 
bananas on it. Pablo often has bananas for supper. 

Do you like to jump rope ? What else have you 
seen rope used for ? The best rope in the world 
is made from a plant that grows in the Philippine 
Islands. It looks much like a banana tree, but 
people call it abaca, or Manila hemp. Rope is 
made from the long, strong fiber in its stem. 

When we come back into the village, Pablo 
proudly points out the new schoolhouse with the 
Stars and Stripes waving above it. He is beginning 



196 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

to love the flag as much as we do. Many school- 
houses have been built in the Philippines, and 
many teachers have gone there from our country. 
Good schools help to make good men and women. 


PABLO’S HOME IN THE PHILIPPINES 
How do you like Pablo’s home? It is built on posts, to keep it from 
getting damp. Why do we not build our houses on posts ? 

As we leave the village, Pablo waves us good-by 
in front of his home. His house is very differ¬ 
ent from ours. It rains a good deal in the Philip¬ 
pines, and so the house stands on posts. This 
helps to keep it dry. It is built of hollow bam- 








OUR NEIGHBORS IN THE PHILIPPINES 197 

boo poles covered with palm leaves. The roof is 
thatched with these leaves so that the rain cannot 
get through. The floor is made of bamboo poles. 
There are wide cracks between them, and the dirt 
drops through. Should you like a floor like this 
or do you like the kind which you can sweep ? 

At Manila we find a large steamer bound for 
the United States. It is noon when we go on 
board. If we were at home we should be fast 
asleep, for it would be about midnight there. The 
sun lights only half the earth at a time. When it 
is shining over Pablo’s home, our half of the earth 
is dark. What time is it in your schoolroom now ? 
About what time is it in Pablo’s home? 


OFF TO AUSTRALIA ON THE OTHER SIDE 
OF THE WORLD 

Australia is another island in the Pacific Ocean. 
It is about as large as Europe, and we call it a 
continent. It lies on the other side of the world 
from us. When we are having day, little Ellen in 
Australia is fast asleep in bed. Australia is much 
farther south than our country, and when we are 
having summer, it is winter there. 

Should you like to visit a gold mine or should 
you rather see a sheep ranch ? Australia is famous 
for both. More sheep live here than in any other 
part of the world. Ellen’s father owns a big sheep 
ranch. Ellen loves the little lambs and has some 
for her pets. 

Sometimes she watches the men shear the sheep. 
Her father has so many sheep that he gets a great 
deal of wool from them. He sends the wool off in 
big wagons to the railroad station. From there it 
goes to a city on the coast where it is loaded on 
ships. These carry the wool halfway round the 
world to Europe and to the United States. Have 
you anything on made of wool ? Perhaps some of 
it may have come from Ellen’s ranch. 



OFF TO AUSTRALIA 


Once Ellen saw a kangaroo. It is a queer¬ 
looking animal. Its hind legs are much longer 


LITTLE ELLEN FEEDING HER LAMBS 
These lambs have lost their mother. Ellen feeds them from a bottle. 
The white lamb is eating as if it enjoyed its dinner 

than its front ones, and it can jump much farther 
than you can. Men use the skin of the kangaroo 
to make leather for bags and belts. 





200 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 


What islands in the Pacific Ocean have we 
now visited? What group among them belongs 



© Keystone View Co., Inc. 

KANGAROOS IN A CITY PARK 


What queer-looking animals kangaroos are. See how short their front 
legs are and how long their hind legs are. Their hind legs are so 
strong t^at they can jump long distances 

to the United States? What have we found the 
people on the islands doing ? Which of the islands 
is so large that we call it a continent? For what 
two things is this continent noted ? 





I 


LIFE IN A GREAT CITY 

How do you get your mail ? your milk ? your ice ? your 
bread? Who helps you keep your automobile in order? 
Who protects your home ? Who keeps the roads and side¬ 
walks in repair? Who sees that the street lights are in 
order so that they burn every night ? Can you always get 
plenty of water from the faucets in your house? Where 
does the water come from? Who cares for the water 
supply in your town or city? 

Name all the kinds of work that you can think of which 
people do in the country; in the city. 

We are going to visit New York, the largest city 
in the whole world. The train takes us into the 
biggest station which we have ever seen. Crowds 
of people are getting off the trains which have 
just come in, and other crowds are boarding 
trains which will soon pull out of the station. 

Now we go out on the streets. How crowded 
they are! Long lines of automobiles are passing 
to and fro. Motor busses are filled with people, 
and other passengers are seated on top. A traf¬ 
fic officer is at every corner. The people do not 
cross the street until he gives them the signal 
to do so. 

There are so many people that the streets 

201 



202 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

cannot hold all the trains and cars. Some of them 
run on tracks built above the streets, and some 
run underground in tunnels called subways. Some 


FIFTH AVENUE IN NEW YORK CITY 
How many lines of cars can you count in the picture ? Is the street in 
front of your schoolhouse wide enough for so many cars side by side ? 

of the subways are under the streets and some are 
under the river that runs through the city. 

The streets look narrow because the buildings 
are so tall. Some of them are more than thirty 






LIFE IN A GREAT CITY 203 

stories high. How many stories high are the tallest 
buildings that you have ever seen? One of the 
very highest buildings is the Woolworth Building. 

There are many great apartment houses in 
New York. Fifty families and more often live in 


A VIEW OF THE SUBWAY IN NEW YORK 
The picture on page 202 shows you that there is little room in New 
York streets for electric cars. The subways under the streets and the 
elevated roads above them carry thousands of passengers every day 

one house. Elevators take them up to their rooms. 
A small elevator, called a dumb waiter, brings up 
their ice and milk and takes the garbage down to 
the janitor in the basement. 

Our first trip in the city will be to the Zoo. We 









204 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 


watch the bears taking their baths, the elephants 
eating their hay, and the lions and tigers pacing 
back and forth. We linger in the monkey house 
and hurry through the building where the snakes 
are. We feed the deer with grass and listen to 
the singing of the birds in the big cages, which are 
as tall as trees. 

At the other end of the city is the Aquarium. 
Here are fishes of beautiful colors, lazy alligators, 
and sleek seals swimming and diving. 

We spend a long time looking at the shop win¬ 
dows. We see things in them from all parts of 
the world. There are pearls from distant waters, 
furs from animals which live in the cold North¬ 
land, rugs made in the tents of wandering peoples, 
and silks, dishes, and jewelry from countries on the 
other side of the earth. 

The ships that bring these things to New York 
have come from many lands. Others have brought 
sugar, tea, coffee, cocoa beans, rubber, and cot¬ 
ton. These will be used in the stores and mills 
and factories of the great city and sent away to 
other cities. 

The vessels at the docks will carry back to the 
countries from which they came wheat from our 


LIFE IN A GREAT CITY 205 

great farms in the West, meat and other animal 
products from our cattle and sheep ranches, flour 
from our mills, boots, shoes, cloth, and clothing 



THE STATUE OF LIBERTY 

Do you remember our visit to Marie in France? The country of 
France gave this beautiful statue to the United States as a token 
of its friendship. At night sailors can see the lighted torch in the 
uplifted hand for miles out in the harbor 


from our factories, and tools and machinery and 
many other things made of the iron which has 
been taken out of our mines. What is raised or 
made in your home town which may be carried on 
these vessels to people in other lands? 








206 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 


Some of the ships at the wharves are the largest 
that we have ever seen. One of them is nine hun¬ 
dred feet long. Can you measure this distance in 
the street near your school and find out how far 
this great ship would reach? 

On an island in the harbor is the famous Statue 
of Liberty. It stands for our land of liberty. It 
cheers the hearts of people who have been away 
from our country and welcomes strangers from 
other lands. 

There are people in New York from nearly 
every country on earth. Some have come from 
countries where they never had a chance to make 
anything of themselves. Others have learned a 
great deal in the schools of their own country but 
do not understand our language and our ways. 

Are there any people from other countries in 
your city? Perhaps you can help them to speak 
and write English and to know what our flag 
stands for. They can tell you many things about 
their country which will help you to understand 
their laws and customs. 


WHY PEOPLE’S HOMES AND WORK ARE 
NOT ALIKE 

We have visited people who live on high moun¬ 
tains and in low plains, on deserts where almost 
no rain falls, and in lands where for weeks at a 
time it rains nearly every day. Some live on the 
shores of the ocean, and others on islands sur¬ 
rounded by it. Others live so far away from the 
ocean that they have never seen it. Some of our 
world friends live where it it always cool or cold, 
and others where it is always warm or hot. 

What people do for a living, what they eat, what 
they wear, and what kind of home they have 
depend on the kind of land they live in. Ahtitah 
in the Northland likes the fat meat of the whale 
and seal, and Nakla and Moke in the hot lands 
like dates and bananas and coconuts. Ahtitah 
dresses in furs, and Moke wears scarcely any 
clothes at all. 

Many of the people in the highlands work in 
mines. They raise animals which give them food 
and help them in their work. Pedro’s father on 
the Andes highlands has his llamas. Mr. and 
Mrs. Tibetan, near the Roof of the World, own 

207 


208 our world neighbors 

yaks. The people who live in northern Norway 
depend on their herds of reindeer. 

Erik’s father, who lives on the coast of Norway, 
is a fisherman. So, too, are many of the Japanese, 
for their islands are surrounded by water. 

We have visited many people who live on plains 
where the level land stretches for miles with no 
high hills or mountains in sight. Here we found 
great farms of wheat and corn, cotton, and sugar 
cane. Feeding on the rich grasses of the plains 
were the cattle which give us our milk and butter 
and cheese. Do you remember the black-and- 
white cows which Jan tended and the round 
cheeses which his mother made? 

More people live on plains than on highlands. 
On the plains the land is level, the soil rich, and 
the farmers can raise large crops and get them 
to market. 

Most of the great cities of the world are on the 
plains and in the valleys. What ones have we seen 
in our travels? Cities are often built near rivers 
and lakes and the seacoasts. Ships can reach them 
easily, bringing things which the people need and 
carrying away the things which are made in the 
city and brought in from the country around. 


PEOPLE’S HOMES ARE NOT ALIKE 209 

The land on our earth is made up of mountains 
and valleys and plains and plateaus. To some of 
these lands Nature gives rich soil, plenty of rain, 
and warm sunshine. In others she scrapes off the 
rich soil, withholds her raindrops, and sends many 
cold days and nights. What Nature does to the 
earth makes a great difference in the way people 
live and in the kind of work they do. 

What friends have we visited on highlands and 
plateaus? How did they dress? What kind of 
weather did they have? Did they have large 
farms and raise big crops? 

What people who live on plains have we visited ? 
What did they do for a living? What did they do 
with the crops which they raised on their farms? 

Why are many of the people who live on coast 
lands and islands fishermen? What ones have 
we visited? 

Why should there be more farms on plains than 
on mountains ? Why are most of our big cities on 
plains ? Why should there be more cities near the 
coast than far away from the ocean ? 

In what kind of region do you live? What 
do many people in your state do for a living? 
Why do they do this kind of work? 


THE FIVE RACES 


In visiting our world neighbors we have met 
people of different colors and races. 

Pedro on the Andes Mountains in South America 
is an Indian. He belongs to the red race. His 
skin is a reddish brown, and his hair is straight 
and black. 

More Indians live in South America than in any 
other continent. Some live in the Andes Moun¬ 
tains and work in mines or drive llama trains for 
the white men. Other tribes live in the forests 
of the Amazon valley. These Indians wear few 
clothes, spear fish, and kill animals for food with 
bows and arrows. 

When white men first came to our country 
they found many Indians here. They lived in 
wigwams, had little patches of corn, and spent 
much of their time in fishing and hunting. Most 
of the Indians in our country now live on land 
which the government has set aside for them. 
We call these lands reservations. 

In the big country of Canada, north of us, many 
Indians live in and near the forests. They hunt 
and fish, and trap wild animals for their furs. 


210 


2 11 


THE FIVE RACES 



Ahtitah, the little Eskimo girl, who lives in the 
north, belongs to the yellow race. So do the boys 


SOME YOUNG INDIAN BRAVES 

These boys belong to the red race. They do not wear clothes like this 
all the time, but they like to dress up sometimes as well as you do. 
Should you like a suit like one of these ? 


and girls in Japan and China who pick the tea 
leaves and feed the silkworms. Their skin is 
darker than ours and has a yellow tint. They have 






212 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 



© Underwood & Underwood 

TWO CHINESE BOYS 

These two boys of the yellow race are world neighbors of ours. 
They live far across the Pacific Ocean 

straight black hair and slanting eyes. There are 
more yellow people on earth than any other race. 
From them we get many things which we need. 





THE FIVE RACES 


213 


CHILDREN OF THE 


PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 


These are children of the brown race. They live on islands which 
belong to the United States. What do you suppose the two little 
girls are playing? 



Pablo, our Filipino friend, belongs to the brown 
race. Most of the brown-skinned people live on 
islands in the Pacific Ocean. The soil of these 



214 


OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 



WORLD NEIGHBORS BELONGING TO THE BLACK RACE 
This family lives in Africa. You can tell from their dress that they 
live in a hot land. Should you like to visit them and see their home ? 

islands is rich, and the people raise rice, sugar 
cane, spices, coffee, and many fruits. They pre¬ 
pare much copra from coconuts. 

In Africa we saw many negroes. They had 
black skins and black, woolly hair. More people 
of the black race live in Africa than in any other 





• © Keystone View Co., Inc. 

A MEMBER OF THE WHITE RACE 

This little neighbor belongs to the white race. How many races are 
there ? What ones have you seen ? 



216 OUR WORLD NEIGHBORS 

continent. We depend on them for the many 
products which we get from the hot parts of that 
continent. 

Most of the people in Europe and America 
belong to the white race. The white people live 
mostly in the parts of the earth between the hot 
belt and the cold belt. In these regions it is not 
too hot to work. Neither is it so cold that one 
has to work all the time just to keep from freezing 
and starving. This is one of the reasons why 
people of the white race have been able to build 
great cities and roads and railroads, to have fine 
farms and big mills and factories, and to buy 
and sell all over the world. 

The black, yellow, red, brown, and white races 
are world neighbors. The work of other races 
provides us with many things which we need, such 
as rubber, sugar, rice, silk, tea, coffee, and cocoa. 
These races need our help in starting schools, 
opening mines, working farms, and building 
good roads and railroads and bridges. They 
need also the cloth, tools, and machinery which 
we make in our factories. Where could we sell 
all these things if it were not for the millions of 
people who live in other parts of the world? 


THE FIVE RACES 


217 


We need the help of all our world neighbors, 
and they need us. We cannot help much or get 
help from them unless we know them. This is 
one reason why we like to learn all we can about 
their lands, their homes, and their work. 

To what race do you belong ? What other races 
are there? Can you find any pictures of people 
of other races and their homes to mount on 
cardboard ? 

Face the north. What people live in this direc¬ 
tion? Face the south. What races live in South 
America? Face the east. What race lives in 
China and Japan? What race lives still farther 
east, in the Philippine Islands ? Turn to the south¬ 
east. What people live in the great continent of 
Africa, which you are facing? 

How do your neighbors in your home town help 
you? How do your neighbors in other parts of 
your country help you ? How do your neighbors 
in other countries help you? 


III. OUR OWN COUNTRY 


AN AIRSHIP TRIP FROM BOSTON 
TO GALVESTON 

We have traveled in many lands and have seen 
our world neighbors at work and at play. Now 
let us take some trips in and around our own 
country and see what the people are doing here. 

First we will go in an airplane around this big 
country of ours. We shall travel much faster 
than we could in a ship or a train, and shall 
stop at only a few places. 

Our airplane is awaiting us at Boston. This is 
one of the old cities in the United States. Some 
of its crooked streets, we are told, were once 
cowpaths through the pastures. You will enjoy 
seeing some of its old buildings. Faneuil Hall, the 
birthplace of Liberty, is one of them. Another is 
the church where the lanterns were hung to warn 
Paul Revere of the coming of the British soldiers. 
Have you read Longfellow’s poem which tells 
about Paul Revere’s famous ride? 

218 


seas® 



THE BEAUTY OF THE MOUNTAINS 































































































. 





























- 


























FROM BOSTON TO GALVESTON 219 

You can climb Bunker Hill Monument and look 
down over the sea of houses below you. Can you 
imagine how different the villages and the people 


FISHING SCHOONERS AT THE PIER IN BOSTON 
Men go out in these fine fishing schooners and bring back thousands 
of pounds of excellent food fish. Boston is one of the largest fish 
markets in the world 


in the streets must have looked in 1775, when 
the battle of Bunker Hill was fought? What can 
you see from the monument that the people who 
lived at the time of the battle never saw? 















220 


OUR OWN COUNTRY 


Boston is noted for other things besides its 
history. It has the greatest fish pier, the biggest 
shoe factory, and the largest cocoa manufactory 



© Keystone View Co., Inc. 

FEEDING THE PIGEONS ON BOSTON COMMON 


Hundreds of pigeons live on and near the Common. They are very 
tame. Many people like to feed them as this little girl is doing. 
Should you like to have them eat corn out of your hand? 


in the world. Its buildings for storing wool are 
the largest in America. It has sugar refineries, 
factories for making rubber boots and shoes, and 



FROM BOSTON TO GALVESTON 


221 


many printing and publishing houses. This book 
was published by a firm in Boston. 

Now we will take our airplane and fly south¬ 
ward. Soon we see below us the city of New York. 
It is the largest city in the whole world. Flying 
low over its wonderful harbor, we see the tall 
buildings lining the water front and the big vessels 
lying at the docks and anchored down the bay. 
Look on page 204 and name some of the things 
that these vessels have brought to our country. 
What will they carry away to other lands ? 

On page 205 there is a picture of something 
which we can see on an island in New York 
harbor. What is it? 

A little farther south we fly over a river and see 
below us the city of Philadelphia. We notice 
the shipyards where some of our largest ships have 
been built and the buildings of the great plant 
where locomotives are made. In many countries 
of the world we can ride behind engines built in 
this great city. 

Flying still farther south, we see a large bay 
where the ocean waters go far back into the land. 
Look down and see the small boats on the bay. 
The men in them are gathering oysters. More 



22 2 OUR OWN COUNTRY 

oysters come from Chesapeake Bay than from any 
other waters. If we visited the city of Baltimore 


© Ewing Galloway 

NEW YORK HARBOR AND WATER FRONT 
Notice the very tall buildings near the water front of New York. 
Should you like to ride in the elevator to the top of one of them and 
enjoy the beautiful view ? See the vessels at the dock. What do you 
think they may have brought us from foreign lands? 


near the head of the bay or other places on its 
shores, we should find that many people earn 
their living by gathering the oysters from their 




FROM BOSTON TO GALVESTON 


223 


beds, removing them from their shells, and pack¬ 
ing them for market, or by canning them. Perhaps 
the oysters which you had in your oyster stew came 
from Chesapeake Bay. 

There are also large vessels out on the bay and 
at the docks in Baltimore. This is one of the 
important cities along our Atlantic coast, and it 
carries on a large trade with other lands. 

At Charleston and Savannah, cities farther south, 
we see ships being loaded with bales of cotton 
fiber. These have come from our cotton fields. 
The vessels will take them to the mills in England 
and other countries of Europe. Do you suppose 
that the people who tend the noisy looms which 
weave the cotton cloth ever think of the country 
from which the cotton fiber comes and of the 
people who raise it? 

Those vessels that are just steaming out of 
Savannah harbor are filled with turpentine. It 
comes from the pine trees in our Southern forests. 
Do you know what turpentine is used for? See 
if you can find out. 

Now we are circling round in the air over the 
oldest town in the United States. It is in the state 
of Florida, and its name is St. Augustine. It was 


224 


OUR OWN COUNTRY 


near here that one of the early explorers hoped 
to find a wonderful fountain of youth. Have you 
ever read stories of Ponce de Leon and of his 
search for a magic fountain whose waters would 
make him young again? Do you think that he 
found such a fountain? 

St. Augustine does not look very old to us. We 
can see many new buildings and some fine big 
hotels. In the winter time these are usually crowded 
with people. We have flown far enough south to 
reach the part of our country where the weather 
is always warm. Thousands of people from the 
colder states farther north come to Florida in the 
winter to enjoy the warm air and live out of doors 
in the sunshine. What did you read about Florida 
on page 18? 

Now we are over the very southern point of 
our country, at the tip end of Florida. See the 
train running over the long chain of coral islands 
which stretch for miles out into the blue water. 
That town just below us, at the southern end of 
the island chain, is Key West. 

See those brown piles heaped up on the wharves. 
What do you suppose they are ? They are sponges, 
and out there in the water are the boats of the 


FROM BOSTON TO GALVESTON 225 

sponge-gatherers. The men use a hook fastened 
to a long pole to get the sponges from the rocks 
to which they cling. In some places where the 



A BOATLOAD OF SPONGES 

Where did these sponges come from? Name all the things you can 
think of for which they will be used 

water is rougher and deeper the men have to dive 
for the sponges. What do we use sponges for? 

Those ships at the docks of Key West are filled 
with tobacco. If we could look through the roofs 
of the long buildings in the town, we should see 
large rooms where many men, women, and girls 
are making cigars and cigarettes. 




226 OUR OWN COUNTRY 

Look off there to the south. Perhaps you can 
see across the blue water the dim shore of the 


BALES OF COTTON ON THE WHARVES 
Perhaps some day you may wear something made of some of this 
cotton. Where will it go and what will be done to it before then ? 


island of Cuba. Many ships bring tobacco from 
Cuba to the United States. Other vessels bring 
sugar. Cuba is famous for both sugar and tobacco. 






FROM BOSTON TO GALVESTON 


227 


Now we turn our airplane westward and fly over 
the Gulf of Mexico. We dip down close to the 
earth. How warm the air is! It is the winter 
season, but we notice that everything is green 
and that flowers are blooming. 

We will make only one stop in the Gulf of 
Mexico. This is at the city of New Orleans, near 
the mouth of the great Mississippi River. Just 
look at the barrels of sugar and the thousands of 
bales of cotton on the wharves, in the sheds, and 
on the vessels at the docks! Can you imagine the 
big mills in our country and Europe where thou¬ 
sands of workers tend the machines which spin 
and weave the cotton fiber into thread and cloth ? 

Flying over Galveston farther west, we see as 
much cotton as we did at New Orleans. How 
many, many cotton plantations there must be in 
our Southern states to supply all this fiber! 


FLYING OVER OUR SOUTHERN BORDER 
TO THE PACIFIC SHORES 

To get to the Pacific Ocean we will fly over 
the southern border of the United States where it 
touches the country of Mexico. If we were in a 
ship instead of an airplane, we should go farther 
south and sail through the Panama Canal. This 
great canal connects the Atlantic and Pacific 
oceans. 

Along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico we see 
below us the derricks over the petroleum wells, 
and the great tanks in which the oil is stored. 
Underground there are large pipes through which 
the petroleum is flowing to the seaports. Here are 
the refineries, where the petroleum is distilled, and 
gasoline, kerosene, and other products obtained 
from it. Some of the oil is taken many miles to 
large cities farther inland, where there are other 
refineries. The products are used in these cities 
or sent in cars and trucks to smaller places. 

Now we are low enough to see, both in our own 
country and in Mexico, great plains where many 
cattle are feeding in the pastures. Do you sup¬ 
pose that one of the men who cares for the cattle 

228 


FROM THE GULF TO THE PACIFIC 229 

on the Mexican side is Luis’s father? You re¬ 
member that he works on a ranch (see page 126). 



WHERE WE GET OUR PETROLEUM 
Below each derrick which you see in the picture is a deep well from 
which petroleum comes. What is made from this oil ? 

Farther west we see below us high mountains 
and high brown plateaus. There are mining 
towns here on the plateaus. Once in a while we 
catch sight of a dark spot on the mountain side. 
It is an opening into a mine. We know that in 




230 OUR OWN COUNTRY 

many places here men are working deep in the 
earth, mining copper, silver, and other minerals. 


CATTLE ON A TEXAS RANCH 

See the cattle feeding on this big ranch. The ranch lies on the great 
plains near the southern border of our country. Over on the Mexican 
side there are cattle ranches very much like this 

Now we have come to the Pacific Ocean. Fly¬ 
ing northward, we see a large city just below us. 
Its name is Los Angeles, and it is the largest city 
on our Pacific coast. It is in the state of California. 
We should like to stop here for a while, for we 



FROM THE GULF TO THE PACIFIC 


231 



AN ARIZONA COPPER MINE 


Ewing Galloway 


Arizona is one of the states on our southern border. It has valuable 
minerals stored below the surface of the ground. The long buildings 
at the right are storage bins for the copper ore. The building lower 
down is the shaft house over the entrance to the mine. Can you 
imagine the men at work in the long tunnels far beneath this building ? 


should have such a good time. Orange and lemon 
groves lie all around. How beautiful they are! 
The air is sweet with the smell of orange blossoms. 




232 OUR OWN COUNTRY 

Did you ever see such big bunches of grapes as 
there are on the vines in that vineyard? Look 


AN ORANGE GROVE IN CALIFORNIA 

Imagine all the trees in this great orchard loaded with yellow fruit like 
the tree on page 19. What is being done to the fruit trees on page 72 ? 

over in that field. Hundreds of trays, covering 
acres of ground, are filled with grapes changing 
in the hot sun and dry air into sweet brown 
raisins. We see also many trays of prunes and 














FROM THE GULF TO THE PACIFIC 233 

apricots. More fruit is raised in California than 
in any other state in our country. 

Does your mother buy any canned fruits which 
have come from the state of California? Look at 
some of the cans and see. 

In the Pacific Ocean there is a current of warm 
water like the one which warms Erik’s home in 
Norway. It is called the Japan Current because 
it flows near the coast of Japan. Then it crosses 
the Pacific to our shores. The winds blow the 
warm air from over this current to the land. So 
there are no cold winters in this part of Cali¬ 
fornia. This is the reason that oranges and lemons 
and other fruits grow so well here. Thousands of 
people from colder parts of the United States like 
to escape Jack Frost, so they come to southern 
California to spend the winter months. 

In the story on page 97 you read about petro¬ 
leum. What is it used for? How do we get it? 
There is a great deal of petroleum here in Cali¬ 
fornia. Some of the wells are sunk near the shore, 
and others go down through the ocean itself and 
its bed to the oil beneath. Ships and trains from 
San Francisco carry petroleum and the products 
made from it to other lands and to other parts of 


234 


OUR OWN COUNTRY 


our own country. Name the different things which 
you use that are made from petroleum. 

Now we are flying over the Golden Gate. This 
is the entrance to the beautiful harbor of San 
Francisco. This big city carries on more trade 
than any other city on the Pacific coast. Look 
down and see the great shipyards. If we were 
nearer, we could see the men working on the vessels 
which are being built there. There are lumber¬ 
yards near the water, and some of the ships at 
the docks are taking on loads of lumber. Others 
are being loaded with grain and canned fruits. 
See the bales of cotton. They have come from 
the Southern states and are going to the mills in 
Japanese cities on the other side of the great ocean. 

Notice the vessels that are being unloaded. 
Those bundles and boxes and bags are filled with 
silk and tea and rice from Japan and China. Those 
vessels flying the flags of South American countries 
have brought coffee and cocoa. Those which have 
come from the Hawaiian Islands are filled with 
sugar and cans of pineapples. Our Filipino neigh¬ 
bors farther across the great ocean have sent rice, 
Manila hemp for making rope, coconut oil, and 
sugar. The people in southern Asia have sent 


FROM THE GULF TO THE PACIFIC 235 

coarse burlap for making bags. The burlap was 
made from the fiber of the jute plant. 

Leaving this busy city, we fly northward over 
high mountains and green valleys. Some of the 
slopes are covered with forests. There are tre,es 
here which are the largest in the world. Many 
men work in the woods felling trees and loading 
them on cars or floating them down the rivers to 
the sawmills. Near Seattle and other cities we see 
sawmills, and great rafts of lumber in the harbors. 

Those long buildings near the water are salmon 
canneries. There are many of them along the 
Pacific shores of the United States, Canada, and 
Alaska, for this is where most of our canned salmon 
comes from. Shouldn’t you like to be here in early 
June and watch the fishermen putting out the nets, 
starting the fish wheels, and fixing the traps for 
the big catch of salmon? What did you read 
about salmon in the story on page 78? 


FLYING ALONG OUR NORTHERN BORDER 

Now we have come to the northern boundary 
of the United States. We will fly back to our 
starting place along the border between our coun¬ 
try and Canada. On either side of us, this border¬ 
land is very beautiful. There are many miles of 
high mountains, dark forests, green valleys, blue 
lakes, and rivers of ice called glaciers. Beyond 
the mountains we see brown pasture lands where 
thousands of cattle and sheep are feeding. We 
catch glimpses of the ranch houses and other 
buildings and the cowboys on their horses. 

Farther east we fly over fields of wheat and oats 
and barley and rye and flax. At every railroad 
station there are big elevators to hold the grain, 
and long trains filled with it are speeding over 
the plains. 

What is that blue water beneath us ? It cannot 
be one of the oceans which border the United 
States, for we are hundreds of miles from either 
one. It is one of the Great Lakes which lie be¬ 
tween our country and Canada. There are five 
of these lakes, and they are among the largest in 
the world. There are many vessels on them. 

236 


ALONG OUR NORTHERN BORDER 237 

Some are carrying grain and flour. Others are 
loaded with meat; and still others, with iron. 



A GLACIER IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES 

We see some wonderful sights as we fly over the mountains on our 
northern border. The picture shows you one of them. It is a great 
glacier moving very, very slowly down through the high valley between 
the mountains. The ice is hundreds of feet thick 


When we take our long journey across the United 
States we shall see where these things come from. 












238 OUR OWN COUNTRY 

As we reach the Atlantic coast our trip in the 
air is ended. We have flown entirely around our 
great country and have seen many interesting 
sights. Which one did you like the best of all? 


ELEVATORS WHERE GRAIN IS STORED 

These great buildings are filled with wheat. See the long shutes 
through which it is pouring down into the vessel which is being loaded 

Take turns being teacher and describe some 
place which we have seen on our airplane trip. Be 
careful not to mention its name, and let the class 




ALONG OUR NORTHERN BORDER 


239 



guess what place you are describing. The one who 
guesses right may take his turn as teacher and 
describe another place. You will like this game. 


© Ewing Galloway 

FREIGHT YARDS AND WATER FRONT AT CLEVELAND 

Cleveland is a big city on one of the Great Lakes. Many things are 
brought here by train to be carried away by vessels on the lakes. The 
vessels bring other things which will be loaded on freight cars and sent 
to many places. What are some of these things (see page 237) ? 

If the teacher writes on the blackboard a list 
of all the places which we have visited, can you 
tell all that we saw in each place ? 












THROUGH OUR GREAT CENTRAL PLAINS 

Now we will take a journey on land. We are 
going to travel through the central part of the 
United States. Do you live in this part of our coun¬ 
try or is your home nearer the coast? Through¬ 
out this long journey we shall not see a high hill 
or a mountain. We shall travel the whole time 
over a great plain. We shall find many busy 
people and visit many large cities. 

If we wished, we could go nearly across the 
United States from south to north by sailing up 
the great Mississippi River. It winds through the 
lowest part of the plain and has so many twists 
and turns that it is called the crookedest river in 
the world. Have you ever seen a very crooked 
brook winding through a meadow? Why does it 
wind so much and flow so slowly ? Would a brook 
that flowed down a steep hill wind about? 

The Mississippi River has great branches that 
rise in the mountains far away to the east and 
the west. Draw on the blackboard a very crooked 
river, with branches flowing into it on either side. 

Instead of sailing up the Mississippi River we 
will journey by land. Then we can wander far to 

240 



THROUGH THE CENTRAL PLAINS 241 

the east and west and see all parts of these great 
plains and what the people who live here are doing. 

We will start on our trip at the Gulf of Mexico 
and go northward through the country. One of 


PLOWING IN THE CENTRAL PLAINS 
This man is plowing his big field, so that he may plant his corn. It 
looks like a long trip across the field. In the summer his corn will be 
as tall as that shown in the picture on page 16 

the first things we notice near the gulf are the 
petroleum wells. How many valuable things there 
are stored in the ground! Petroleum is one of the 
most useful of these. To get it, men have drilled 




242 


OUR OWN COUNTRY 


wells not only near the Gulf of Mexico but in 
other parts of these plains. What did you read 
about petroleum on pages 228 and 233? 

Near the mouth of the Mississippi River is the 
city of New Orleans. You remember that we flew 
over it in our airplane. What two things did we 
see there (see page 227)? 

Not far from New Orleans we begin to see great 
fields of sugar cane. Some of the sugar which was 
on the wharves at New Orleans came from the 
juice of cane which grew in these fields. Some was 
brought from other lands. Do you remember the 
story which we read about sugar? What is the 
name of the island where the people raise a great 
deal of cane and send much sugar to the United 
States (see page 226)? 

Now we are in the midst of cotton plantations. 
We travel for miles among the cotton fields, and 
we see many boats on the Mississippi River taking 
cotton down to New Orleans. We go to the east 
and the west, and still on every farm we see cotton 
growing and people picking the fluffy white fiber. 

Read again the story of cotton beginning on 
page 52, and tell us about it. 

A little farther north we see fields of something 


THROUGH THE CENTRAL PLAINS 243 

that looks very much like sugar cane. Yes, you 
have guessed what it is,—corn. The cornfields in 
these plains are the largest in the world. You 
remember that the United States raises much 



FEEDING HIS PRIZE HOG 


more corn than any other country. It is grown 
in nearly every state, but the most of it comes 
from the Central Plains. What is done with all 
the millions of bushels which grow here (see 
pages 15-17)? 

See those little pigs out in the field. There are 





244 


OUR OWN COUNTRY 


dozens of them. There are many fat hogs too. 
Farmers in all parts of the country keep hogs, but 
there are more here in the corn belt than anywhere 
else. Why is this so? Should you like to belong 
to a hog club and win a prize for the very best 
hog raised by any boy or girl in your state? 

The plants over in that field have leaves two 
and three feet long. They are so big that they 
hide the ground. That is a tobacco field. Close 
by are the buildings where the men hang the long 
leaves to dry. In places the fields of tobacco are 
covered with white canvas. They look like great 
flat-topped tents, bigger than any circus tents 
which you ever saw. The canvas protects the 
tobacco from the hot sun, from heavy storms of 
rain and hail, and from insects. 

All through these great plains we see many 
cattle feeding in the pastures. There are many 
dairy farms in this part of our country. What 
did you read about dairy farms in the story on 
page 31? What are some of the interesting things 
which you might see on a dairy farm ? 

The boys and girls who live in the southern part 
of our country have no cold winters with frozen 
ponds for skating and big white snowdrifts for 



THROUGH THE CENTRAL PLAINS 245 

snowballing and coasting. Many of them have 
never seen snow. Flowers bloom and crops grow 
there all through the year. As we travel north 


HARVESTING BARLEY ON THE PLAINS 
Farmers on the plains raise many kinds of grains. You read in the 
story on page 9 about our great wheat farms and in the next story 
about our corn crop. The farmer in this picture is harvesting his 
barley. The machine cuts it and ties it up in bundles, such as you 
see at the left 

we find the weather growing cooler. Now we are 
coming to the part of the United States where 
during part of the year the north wind brings cold 
weather, where Jack Frost stays all winter, and 




246 OUR OWN COUNTRY 

where the water vapor in the air falls in snow¬ 
flakes and covers the earth with a thick blanket. 

Traveling in the summer time through the 
plains in the central part of our country, we see 
many large fields of waving grain. We know what 
this grain is. It is wheat. We learned of these 
great fields when we read about the little wheat 
seeds in the story on page 9. Were it not for the 
wheat fields on the plains of the United States 
and in Canada, you could not have your nice 
white bread for supper. 

We see other grains growing, too,—flax and oats 
and barley and rye. Can you bring any of these 
seeds to school for your collection ? 

See those long rows of sugar beets. The men 
and boys are pulling them and cutting off the tops 
just as Stefan and his people were doing in Poland 
(see page 148). There are factories here where 
the juice is made into sugar. Do you remember 
reading on page 47 how this is done? 

In our travels through the plains we find 
that there are rich treasures stored under the 
ground as well as on the surface. You have al¬ 
ready read about petroleum and petroleum wells. 
Some of our richest coal beds are in this part of 


THROUGH THE CENTRAL PLAINS 247 

the country, and we pass many places where bitu¬ 
minous coal is mined. What other kind of coal is 
mined in the United States (see page 92)? What 
is the difference between the two kinds? 

Near the northern boundary of our country we 
find some mines very different from those which 
we have seen in other places. They are great open 
pits in the earth. You know what they are, for 
you read about them on page 101. Engines are 
pushing and pulling long trains of freight cars into 
and out of the pits. Steam shovels puff and rattle 
as they scoop up great mouthfuls of the reddish 
soil and dump it into the cars. Five hundred men 
working hard all day could not do as much as one 
of these big shovels. 

These open pits are the richest iron mines in the 
world. Most mines are deep in the earth. I will 
tell you how the iron here happened to lie so near 
the surface. 

This part of our country was once covered with 
high mountains. The region is so very old that 
Nature’s workers, the frosts and the rains, the 
brooks and the rivers, have worn the mountains 
down into very low hills. The wearing away of the 
mountains has brought the iron near the surface. 


2 48 OUR OWN COUNTRY 

You remember the Great Lakes which lie be¬ 
tween our country and Canada. They are near the 
iron region. Long freight trains carry the iron ore 
to the lakes and out over the water on high docks 
half a mile long. Vessels lie beside these docks, 
and the ore falls from the cars into the ships. 
These ships carry it to the cities on the shores of 
the lakes. Here the iron is manufactured into many 
different things or sent by train to other cities. 

There are deep forests here in the northern part 
of the United States where many lumbermen work. 
In parts of the Central Plains very few trees grow. 
The people who live in the treeless regions are glad 
to buy lumber for their houses and barns from 
the cities near the forests. So there are many saw¬ 
mills here, and lumberyards, and factories for 
making things from wood—street cars, furniture, 
tools, and other things. See if you can find out 
where the desks and chairs in your schoolroom 
came from. 

There are so many people at work on our plains 
—on farms, in mines, and in forests—that large 
cities have grown up here. One of these is 
St. Louis. If I tell you something about St. Louis, 
and then you think hard, you can tell some of the 


THROUGH THE CENTRAL PLAINS 249 

things which the people do there. Corn and wheat 
farms and those where cattle and sheep and hogs 
are raised lie all around. Rivers connect the city 
with the forests to the north and east. Waterways 
and railroads lead to coal and iron regions. The 
tobacco fields of Kentucky are not far away. Now 
what are some of the things which you should 
expect to see the people doing in St. Louis? 

Another big city in the Central Plains is Chicago. 
It is built on the shore of one of the Great Lakes 
and has grown to be the second largest city in 
the United States. There are so many interesting 
sights to see in Chicago that we hardly know which 
one we enjoy the most. We have already read of 
the great animal city—the stockyards—where 
thousands of cattle, sheep, and hogs live for a day 
or longer (see page 28). We should like to count 
the long trainloads of meat and lumber which are 
constantly leaving the city, and the trainloads of 
cattle and wheat and flour which are coming in 
and going out of the stations. 

We should like to visit the factories where are 
made the great harvesters and reapers and other 
machines which we saw out in the grainfields. A 
drive on the broad avenues on the lake front, with 


OUR OWN COUNTRY 


250 


the sparkling water on one side and beautiful 
houses and gardens on the other, almost makes us 
think that we are in fairyland. In other parts of 



© Ewing Galloway 

A VIEW OF THE STOCKYARDS IN CHICAGO 


Every day many trainloads of cattle, sheep, and hogs come from 
ranches and farms to the great city. The animals are put into the 
pens in the stockyards. Some are sold and shipped away and some go 
to the slaughterhouses to be killed 

the city the crowded streets, the tall skyscrapers, 
the many factories, and the busy railroad stations 
all show us what a busy place Chicago is, and what 











THROUGH THE CENTRAL PLAINS 251 

an important part of our country the Central 
Plains must be. Many cities are needed here to 
manufacture and to send away the products of 


LAKE SHORE DRIVE, CHICAGO 

You may follow this beautiful avenue all the way from the crowded 
business part of Chicago to one of the most beautiful parks in the city 

the plains and to supply the people who live on 
them with many other things which they need. 

There is another place on the Great Lakes 
which you will enjoy seeing. This is Detroit, the 
automobile city. There are more automobiles 
made in Detroit than in any other city in the world. 




252 OUR OWN COUNTRY 

Very many of the people who live in the city of 
Detroit work in the great factories where hun¬ 
dreds of cars are made every day. What auto¬ 
mobiles do you know which are made in Detroit? 


A VIEW OF DETROIT 

The picture shows you some of the big hotels in Detroit. This city 
has grown very fast and is now one of the largest in the country. 
What have you seen which was made in Detroit? 

You remember the story you read on page 9 
of the little wheat seeds and how they were 
changed from grains of wheat to flour ? This may 
have been done in Minneapolis, for more flour is 








THROUGH THE CENTRAL PLAINS 253 

made here than in any other city in the world. 
We should not mind getting covered with fine 
white dust if we could go through one of the great 
mills here and learn just how the flour is made. 
We should like to see how the grains of wheat are 
lifted to the top of the mills. Then we should like 
to watch the cleaning, and the fanning away of 
the dirt and the straw. We should like to see the 
great rollers which grind the seeds, and the sifters 
which separate the yellow bran from the white part. 
We should like to watch the fine white flour come 
out of the chutes and fill bag after bag until we are 
tired of counting them. In some of the large mills 
in Minneapolis thousands of bags of flour are 
made every day. 


ON OUR HIGH PLATEAUS AND MOUNTAINS 

We have taken a long trip around the shores 
of the United States, and we have journeyed 
through the plains in the central part of the coun¬ 
try. Now let us take a trip on the highlands. We 
shall find fewer people here and fewer cities and 
towns than on the plains, but there will be many 
other interesting things to see. 

Our two great highlands lie on either side of 
the wide plains. We must choose between them, 
for we have not time to visit both of them. The 
eastern highland is much lower than the one in 
the west. Its name is the Appalachian Highland. 
It is here that many of our coal and iron mines 
are located. There are oil wells here and places 
where men get natural gas for heating and light¬ 
ing. The streams flowing down the slopes of the 
mountains to the plains on either side have much 
power in their swift waters. What do you suppose 
that this power is used for (see page 74)? 

Let us choose the Western Highland for our 
trip. Its mountain peaks are much higher and 
sharper than the peaks in the Appalachian High¬ 
land. Notice how much sharper the peaks are in 
2 54 


ON OUR HIGH PLATEAUS 


255 



the picture on page 256 than they are in the picture 
on this page. This is because the western moun¬ 
tains are younger, and Nature has not yet had 
time to wear them down and smooth them off. 


A MOUNTAIN RANGE IN THE APPALACHIAN HIGHLAND 
Notice how rounded the tops of the mountains are. They are very 
old and for centuries the heat and the cold, the frosts, the rains, and 
the ice and snow have been wearing them down and rounding them off 

The plateau on which the mountains stand is 
a mile higher than the ocean. Some of the moun¬ 
tains on either side rise into the air as far again. 
The Rocky Mountains are on the eastern edge of 



256 OUR OWN COUNTRY 

the plateau, and the Sierra Nevada and the Cas¬ 
cade Mountains on its western edge. Have you 



A MOUNTAIN RANGE IN THE WESTERN HIGHLAND 


How are these mountains different from those on page 255? These 
are younger than the mountains in the East, and Nature has not yet 
had time to wear them down and smooth them off. (Courtesy of 
Publicity Branch, Department of Immigration and Colonization, 
Ottawa, Canada) 


ever heard of these mountains ? Perhaps you may 
know someone who has traveled through them. 

In both of these great mountain systems we see 
many high peaks. It is so cold on their tops that 
you could find snow there on the Fourth of July. 



ON OUR HIGH PLATEAUS 


257 


Some of their slopes are bare and brown. On 
others there are beautiful waterfalls, deep for¬ 
ests, and glaciers of blue ice. There are lovely 
lakes in which many fish live, and swift rivers 
flowing to the sea. What will some of the water¬ 
falls in the rivers be used for some day? 

We see many mining towns on the plateau and 
the mountain slopes, for there are rich beds of 
minerals here. If we should go down into the 
mines, we should find the miners getting out cop¬ 
per, gold, and silver. Are any of these mined in the 
highland in the east (see page 254)? 

In many of the towns there are no trees shading 
the dusty streets, and no green lawns and pretty 
flower beds around the houses. Water is too 
precious here to be used for lawns and gardens. 
In some places it has to be brought in pipes for 
many miles. 

The high Sierra Nevada, west of the plateau, 
shuts out the moisture in the air, and little rain 
falls here. In many places grass comes up green 
in the spring, but in the hot, dry air of summer 
it turns brown. Thousands of cattle feed on this 
brown grass. We pass many ranches too, where 
there are large flocks of sheep. 


OUR OWN COUNTRY 


258 


As we ride over parts of the great plateau we 
see no towns, no farms, and no ranches. In other 
parts we see fine farms and splendid crops of fruit 



A MINING CAMP IN NEVADA 

Nevada has many valuable minerals. There are many mining camps 
like the one in this picture. Notice the lack of trees and grass in this 
dry region. See the little shacks of the miners, the larger buildings 
connected with the mine, and the great piles of rock waste 


and vegetables. How is it possible that people can 
have farms in such a dry place? Plants will not 
grow without water, yet here they are growing 
where there is very little rainfall. 






ON OUR HIGH PLATEAUS 


259 


This is one of the places where men are trying 
to help Nature. Where she has given them too 
little water they have brought it from miles away. 
They have built dams across rivers and made great 
ponds, called reservoirs, to hold the water. They 
have built canals and ditches to carry it to their 
farms. You read about all this on pages 71 and 
72. What do you call this way of watering? 

Off there in the distance we can see blue water 
glistening in the sunshine. It is not the ocean, for 
we are hundreds of miles from it. This water is 
the Great Salt Lake. Should you like to go bath¬ 
ing in the lake ? There is so much salt in the water 
that it is heavier than your body, and you can 
easily float on it. Be careful not to swallow any of 
the water. You will not like it, for it is much more 
salty than ocean water. 

Since we started on our travels in the United 
States we have journeyed many miles. We have 
visited the wide plains in the central part of our 
country and have seen the great cities there and 
the fine farms. What are some of the things that 
the farmers raise? 

We have visited the Appalachian Mountains in 
the east and learned of the beds of coal and iron 


OUR OWN COUNTRY 


260 

there. We have climbed the plateaus and looked 
at the high peaks of our Western mountains. We 
have watched the cattle and sheep feeding in the 
high pastures. We have seen the miners getting 
out copper, gold, silver, and lead. We have found 
out that the raindrops cannot get over the moun¬ 
tains to the high plateaus and that the people 
there have brought the water from many miles 
away to make their crops grow. 

Now we will say good-by to these places where 
people work, and go for a while to some of the 
beautiful places where they play and rest. 


GENERAL REVIEW 

See if you can fill the blanks in these sentences. 

The Central Plains lie in the_part of our country. 

The Appalachian Highland lies_of the plains. The 

-Mountains and the_and_Mountains lie 

west of them. Between these Western mountains there 

is a high, wide- There is little water on this plateau, 

and men have to_their farms. 

In the Appalachian Mountains we mine_and_ 

In the Western Highland there are mines of_,_, 

and_In the western part of the United States there 

are many_and_ranches. There are places in 

different parts of our country where men drill wells to 
get -- 

In the southern part of our country there are large 

plantations of_and_ Farther north we come 

to our_belt. Many_live here and are fed on 

the corn. Farther north there are great fields of- 

Some of the largest cities in our Central Plain are-, 

_, and_ The largest city in the world is- 

It is on the_coast of the United States. Other cities 

on the eastern coast of our country are-,-,-, 

and_ Near the southern tip of Florida is- 

Near the mouth of the Mississippi River is the city of 

_ On our Pacific coast are-and-• The 

oldest city in the United States is- 


261 





SOME WONDERS OF THE WEST 

I know a place in the United States which you 
would rather see than mines or ranches or farms 
or cities. It is one of the greatest wonderlands in 
the world. It is called Yellowstone Park. It is not 
a small green park like those in cities and towns, 
but covers many miles. 

There are places in Yellowstone Park where 
steam comes out of cracks in the earth. There 
are fountains of steaming, hissing, boiling water. 
There are ponds and pools of the most beautiful 
blue in which the water is hot instead of cold. 
There are mounds and terraces of beautifully 
colored rock—white, pink, red, and yellow. These 
are made of the mineral matter which was held 
in the hot water as it came out of the ground. 
There are sparkling lakes of cold water where 
many fish live. There are wonderful falls which 
leap down over high cliffs, and rushing rivers 
which flow between banks of lovely colors. 

The fountains of boiling water are called geysers. 
In the park there are hundreds of them of all sizes 
and ages. Geysers are really water volcanoes. Far, 
far down in the earth it is very hot; so hot, 

262 


SOME WONDERS OF THE WEST 


263 



OLD FAITHFUL GEYSER 

About once an hour, day and night, winter and summer, Old Faithful 
sends a mass of steaming, hissing, boiling water one hundred and eighty 
feet into the air. How high is that compared with your schoolhouse ? 


indeed, that the water there has changed to steam. 
When water turns to steam it must have more room, 
so it rushes up with great force through cracks in 




264 OUR OWN COUNTRY 

the earth. As it gets nearer the surface it becomes 
a little cooler and changes back to water again. 


© Ewing Galloway 

FEEDING A BEAR IN YELLOWSTONE PARK 

The bears in the park are so tame that they 
come up to the hotels to be fed. Sometimes they 
come out into the road, and people driving through 



SOME WONDERS OF THE WEST 265 

the park feed them. The bears are very fond 
of candy and sweets. Should you like to give a 
big brown bear some of your candy ? Besides the 
bears there are deer, moose, antelopes, and herds 
of buffalo in the park. Have you ever seen any 
of these animals? 

Yellowstone Park is such a wonderful place that 
our government owns it. Many roads and hotels 
have been built, and the park is being kept as a 
wonderland for all the people to enjoy. 

I hope that some day you will go to Yellow¬ 
stone Park. What shall you like best to see 
there ? 

Now we will go to another wonderful place. 
This is near the Colorado River, in the south¬ 
western part of our country. On a map the 
Colorado River looks like any other river, but 
no river in the whole world has a valley like it. 

Do you know what a canyon is? It is a deep 
valley or gorge with steep cliff sides. Canyons are 
sometimes hundreds of feet deep. The south¬ 
western part of the United States is sometimes 
called Canyon Land because many of the rivers 
flow in deep gorges or canyons. 

Have you ever seen a tiny brook cutting its 


266 


OUR OWN COUNTRY 



THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO RIVER 

What a wonderful work this river has done in cutting such a tremen¬ 
dous gash in the earth! After a heavy rain see if you can find a brook 
cutting its canyon in the gutter 


little canyon? It works in just the same way that 
a big river does. See if you can find one some rainy 
day. What becomes of the soil which it removes ? 




SOME WONDERS OF THE WEST 267 

Of all the canyons anywhere on the earth, the 
one which the Colorado River has made is the most 
wonderful. As you stand on the edge of the cliff, 
the river is a mile below you. It looks like a silvery 
brook instead of a big, rushing river. An eagle 
flying over it looks as small as a robin. The 
opposite bank of the river is ten miles away. 
Think of a river that cuts a gash in the earth a 
mile deep and ten miles wide! 

Within the Colorado Canyon there are smaller 
gorges. The rock left standing has been carved 
by the water into many shapes like towers and 
statues and monuments. These are of different 
colors,—pink, gray, red, and yellow. Some day 
perhaps you may see them. 

There are many other wonderful sights in the 
western part of our country. There are other great 
gorges, high waterfalls, bridges made of rock, trees 
turned to stone, and homes of ancient people who 
lived hundreds of years ago in caves in the cliffs. 
You will study about all these and many other in¬ 
teresting things later in your geography lessons. 


SOME INTERESTING SIGHTS IN THE EAST 

In the eastern part of our country there are as 
interesting sights as there are in the West. One 
of these is Mammoth Cave. 

Have you ever played in a cave in the rocks? 
Mammoth Cave is bigger than any you ever saw. 
" Mammoth ” means " big.” It is not a single cave, 
but many of them connected' by dark passages. 
You could wander for many miles without coming 
to the end of these caves. 

There are several rivers in Mammoth Cave. 
They have flowed underground for a long way. 
People who visit the cave usually take a boat ride 
on the black waters of Echo River. They like to 
speak to the echo and listen for its reply. Have 
you ever heard an echo? 

Men have found blind fish in the rivers of 
Mammoth Cave. The fish have lived in the dark 
so long that they have lost the use of their eyes. 

How do you suppose that this great cave was 
made? I will tell you. In one of the stories in 
the first part of this book you read of the power 
of running water. It was the water in the un¬ 
derground rivers that wore away the rock and 

268 


SOME SIGHTS IN THE EAST 269 

made the cave. Have you ever seen water wear¬ 
ing away a bank or making a hole in the ground 
or carrying off the dirt and stones in the street? 


© Keystone View Co., Inc. 

MAMMOTH CAVE 

Here we are on the dark river which flows through Mammoth Cave. 
The water in this river helped to wear away the rock and make the cave 

The rock in the part of Kentucky where Mam¬ 
moth Cave is located is made of lime. Limestone 
is worn away by water more easily than any other 
kind of rock. That is why the cave is so large. 









270 


OUR OWN COUNTRY 


The water has worn the rock in the cave into 
many curious shapes. There are great rooms like 
chapels and temples and grottoes. In one room 
flowers carved out of the stone cover tall columns. 
In another room the rock ceiling glitters as if it 
were covered with stars. I hope that some day 
you may go to Kentucky and see these wonder¬ 
ful things. 

In this same part of our country there is a bridge 
made by the water. It has worn out the part of 
the rock underneath and left the rock bridge. 
Should you like to walk across this Natural Bridge 
in Virginia ? There are much larger natural bridges 
in the West. The largest in the world is in Utah. 
It is arched like a rainbow and is called the Rain¬ 
bow Natural Bridge. 

In New Hampshire, Nature’s workers—the 
rains, the frosts, and the winds—have done an¬ 
other wonderful thing. Have you ever heard of 
the Old Man of the Mountain ? Look at his face 
in the picture. It has taken many, many years 
to carve this face on the mountainside. 

Nature is always patient. She is never in a 
hurry, but she is never idle. In the long, long years 
she does wonderful things. There is another place 


SOME SIGHTS IN THE EAST 


271 



THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN 
Think of the long years that it has taken Nature to carve this likeness 
from the rock. Which of her helpers have aided her in this work ? 

in the eastern United States where she has been 
working for many long centuries and is still busy. 
This is at Niagara Falls. Look at the picture and 
try to imagine how beautiful they are. 



2 72 


OUR OWN COUNTRY 



© Ewing- Galloway 


A VIEW OF NIAGARA FALLS 


Some day you may visit Niagara and see the rushing river leap over 
the high cliff. There is great power in the swift waters. Men are 
using this power to turn great wheels connected with machines which 
generate electricity. For what is this electricity used ? 


At Niagara Falls the river leaps over a cliff one 
hundred and sixty-four feet high. Can you find out 
how high this is compared with your schoolhouse ? 

It is a beautiful sight to see the river come rush¬ 
ing and foaming and dashing over the cliff. It 



SOME SIGHTS IN THE EAST 


2 73 


throws clouds of spray high in the air. When the 
sun shines through the spray, all the colors of the 
rainbow show in it. 

There is great power in the water of the Niagara 
River where it leaps over the cliff. Men are har¬ 
nessing it and making it do other work besides 
wearing away the rock. Read again the story on 
pages 73 and 74, and tell the class what this work is. 

The electricity made by the power of the water 
in Niagara Falls is carried on wires to many cities 
and towns. It lights the streets and houses in 
these places, runs the street cars, and moves the 
machines in many mills and factories. 


OUR OWN UNITED STATES 

What a good time we have had traveling over 
the plains and mountains and seeing some of the 
wonders of our country! And what a splendid 
land it is! Some of our world neighbors live on 
deserts, some in very cold countries, and some in 
lands where it is always hot and damp. Others 
have their homes in countries which are often at 
war, or in places where there is little freedom to 
make the best of themselves. Still others live on 
wide plains of fertile soil and in lands made beau¬ 
tiful by mountains and valleys. 

We think that our country is the best place on 
earth. It is big; it stretches from ocean to ocean 
and from the warm regions of the south to the 
cool, bracing lands on the border of Canada in 
the north. 

Our country is rich. It has great plains of fer¬ 
tile soil where splendid crops can be produced, rich 
beds of many kinds of minerals, broad pasture 
lands where millions of cattle and sheep can feed, 
and deep forests of valuable wood. Its waters 
abound in valuable fish. 

In the United States there are great lakes over 


OUR OWN UNITED STATES 


275 



which vessels carry valuable products; there are 
many, many rivers which are good highways for 
ships, which supply the water needed for irriga¬ 
tion in the drier parts of the country, and which 


THE FLAG OF OUR COUNTRY 


And for your country, boy, and for that flag, never dream a dream 
but of serving her as she bids you. No matter what happens to you, 
never let a night pass but you pray God to bless that flag. Remem¬ 
ber, boy, that behind officers, and government, and people even, 
there is the Country Herself, your Country, and that you belong to 
Her as you belong to your own mother. Stand by Her, boy, as you 
would stand by your mother.— Edward Everett Hale 



276 


OUR OWN COUNTRY 


furnish power to help in many industries. Is 
there a river near your home? For what are its 
waters used? 

Our country is beautiful. Which do you like 
best, its green forests, its winding rivers, its blue 
lakes, its snow-capped mountains and green hills, 
its dashing waterfalls, its great canyons, or some 
other feature which we have not mentioned? 

We are glad that our country is so big, so rich, 
and so beautiful. We are glad that we live in such 
a splendid land as the United States. We want 
it always to be the best land, and its people the 
happiest on earth. 

These things will be true if each one does his 
part in making them so. If everybody all over 
our country tries to make his home, his school, 
and his town the very best that he can, that will 
make the whole country fine. 

What are some of the things that you can do 
to make your school and your part of the town or 
city better than it has ever been before? Have 
you ever done any of these things? 


INDEX AND PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY 


Key: ale, at, ask, arm, final; eve, end, her; ice, ill; old, on, for, anchor; use, up, 
fur, circus; goose, good; ’ as in eaten (et'’n). 


Abaca (a-ba-ka'), 195 
Abyssinia (ab-i-sln'i-a), 136-138 
Africa, transportation, 113; Abyssinia, 
1:36—138 ; Sahara, 168-172; negro 
life, 181-184; copra, 195 
Ahtitah (a-te'ta), 4, 177-180, 211 
Airplanes, 113 
Alaska, 235 
Ali (a'le), 70, 164-167 
Alpacas (al-pak'az), 124 
Alps, 128 

Amazon valley (am'a-zon), 173-176 
Andes (an'dez), 121-124, 1 4 I 
Antelopes (an'te-lops), 136, 183 
AppalachianHighland(ap-a-la / chi-an), 
2 54 

Apples, 23 

Apricots (a'pri-kots), 25, 233 
Argentina (ar-jen-te'na), 141-144 
Arizona (ar-i-zo'na), 231 
Asia (a'sha), China,41,57,113,191,234; 
Japan, 41, 57, 188-192, 208, 234; 
Tibet, 132-135; Siberia, 161-163 
Australia (ds-trali-a), 198-200 
Automobiles (6-to-mo'bilz), 251-252 
Avalanches (av'a-lan-chez), 128 

Baltimore (bSl'ti-mor), 222, 223 
Bananas, food, 4 ; story, 20-22 ; Africa, 
183; Philippines, 195 
Barley, Asia, 134; United States, 245, 
246 

Beans, 127, 183 


Bees, 138 

Belgium (bel'ji-um), 155-156 
Berlin (bfir-lin'), 151-152 
Berta (ber'ta), 150-152 
Boots and shoes, from skins, 30 ; manu¬ 
facturing, 108-109,220; exports, 205 
Boston, 218-220 

Brazil (bra-ziP), 43, 106, 173-176 

Brazil nuts, 174 

Bricks, 85 

Brooders, 35 

Brooks, 68, 73 

Buenos Aires (bwa'nos i'ras), 141, 142 

Buffaloes (buf'a-loz), 190 

Building stone, 85-86 

Bunker Hill Monument, 219 

Burlap, 235 

Butter, 31, 34, 162-163 

California (kal-i-for'nl-a), fruit, 18, 24- 
25, 231 ; climate, 233. 

Camels, Abyssinia, 136; Sahara, 168, 
169, 170 

Canada, 235, 236, 237, 246 
Canals, 153 

Canyons (kan'yunz), 265-267 
Cary, Phoebe (fe'be ka'ri), 155 
Cascade Mountains (kas-kad'), 256-257 
Cattle, story, 26-34 ; Mexico, 126, 228; 
Abyssinia, 136; South America, 
143-144, 176; Holland, 153; Si¬ 
beria, 162 ; on plains, 208 ; United 
States, 228, 236, 257 


278 


INDEX 


Cement (se-ment'), 86-87 
Central Plains, 243-247 
Chamois (sham'i), 130 
Charleston (charlz'tun), 223 
Cheese, 34, 151, 153 
Chesapeake Bay (ches'a-pek), 222 
Chicago (shi-ko'go), 28, 249-250 
China, tea, 41, 234; silk, 57, 191, 234; 

transportation, 113 ; rice, 234 
Cities, 208, 248 
Clams, 77 

Cleveland (klev'land), 239 
Clothing, 49-51 

Coal, fuel, 73; story, 91-96; Poland, 
149; Siberia, 163; United States, 
246-247, 254 

Cocoa, story, 38-40 ; imports, 204, 234 ; 

Boston, 220 
Coconuts, 1 93-195, 234 
Coffee, story, 43-45; Mexico, 126; Abys¬ 
sinia, 136; Brazil, 175-176; im¬ 
ports, 204, 234 

Colorado River (kol-o-ra'do), 265-267 
Columbus, Christopher (kris'to-fer 
ko-lum'bus), 149, 150 
Commerce, 113 
Concrete (kon'kret), 86-87 
Congo River, 181 

Copper, a metal, 100; described, 102; 
South America, 122 ; Mexico, 125 ; 
United States, 229-230, 257 
Copra (kop'ra), 193-195 
Corn, early settlers, 2 ; food for animals, 
9,31; story, 14-17; Argentina, 142; 
Africa, 165, 183; on plains, 208; 
Central Plains, 243 

Cotton, clothing, 49; story, 52-56; 
Egypt, 165; imports, 204; on 
plains, 208 ; exports, 223, 226, 227, 
234 

Crocodiles (krok'o-dilz), 176 
Cuba (ku'ba), 226 


Dairying, 31-34, 208 
Dates, 4, 169, 172 
Delta plains (del'ta), 70, 119 
Deserts, 164, 168-172 
Detroit (de-troit') 251-252 
Dew, 66 

Dikes (diks), 153 

Earthquakes, 124 
Echo River (ek'o), 268 
Eggs, 34-35 
Egypt (e'jlpt), 164-167 
Eiffel Tower (ef-ek) 160 
Elephants, 136, 183 
Elevators, 12, 238 
Ellen, 198-199 
England, 223 
Erik (er'ik), 185-187, 208 
Ermine (ur'min), 163 
Eskimos (es'ki-moz),4, 51,83, 118,177- 
180, 211 

Europe (u'rup), plains, 145-160; im¬ 
porting copra, 195; importing wool, 
198; importing cotton, 223 

Faneuil Hall (fan'd), 218 
Farming, 6, 62, 70 
Fertilizer (fur'-ti-liz-er), 29, 55, 64 
Figs, 136 

Filipino (fil-i-pe'no), 193 
Fiords (fyOrds), 185, 187 
Fishing, story, 75-77 ; salmon, 78-81, 
235; Norway, 186-187, 208; Japan, 
189, 208 

Flax, early settlers, 1; clothing, 51; 
Argentina, 142; Russia, 148; Bel¬ 
gium, 155-156; France, 158; United 
States, 236, 246 
Flood plains, 70, 119 
Florida, 18, 223, 224 
Flour, manufacturing, 13, 253 ; exports, 
205 ; Great Lakes, 237 


INDEX 


279 


Forests, story, 88-90; Europe, 146, 
157-158; Asia, 163; Africa, 181; 
United States, 235, 236, 248, 257 
Fox, 163, 180 

France (frans), 156-160, 191 

Frost, 66 
Fuel, 91-93 

Furs, for clothing, 49; Siberia, 163; 
Eskimos, 180; New York, 204 

Galveston (gal'ves-tun), 227 
Gas, 91, 98-99 
Gasoline, 97 

Germany (jur'ma-m), 150-152 
Geysers (gEserz), 262-264 
Glaciers (gla'shgrz), 128, 236, 237, 
257 

Goats, skins, 30; Asia, 135,163; Africa, 
136, 138, 168 

Gold, a metal, 100; Siberia, 163; Aus¬ 
tralia, 198; United States, 257 

Golden Gate, 234 

Grain, Europe, 150, 153; Asia, 163; 
United States, 234, 236, 237 

Grand Canyon, 267 

Grapes, 24, 158-159, 232 

Great Lakes, 236-237, 248 

Great Salt Lake, 259 

Gulf of Mexico (mek'si-ko), 227 

Gulf Stream, 185 

Hacienda (a-syen'da), 125-126 
Hawaiian Islands (ha-wl'yan), 234 
Highlands, life, 139-140, 207, 236, 260; 

mines, 229; compared, 254-255 
Himalaya Mountains (hi-ma'la-ya), 132 
Hogs, 15, 243-244 
Holland, 153—155 
Homes, 82-87 

Icebergs, 76 

Incubators (In'ku-ba-terz), 35 


India, 41 

Indians, corn, 14; homes, 82; Mexico, 
125; South America, 175,176, 210, 
211 

Ireland, 156 

Iron, story, 100-102 ; Poland, 149; 
United States, 205, 237, 247-248, 
254 

Irrigation (ir- 1 -ga'shun), 71-72,258-259 
Italians (l-tal'yanz), 144 
Ivory, 183, 184 

Jack Frost, 66, 147, 177, 245 
Jan (yan), 153-155, 2 q8 
Japan (ja-pan'), tea, 41; silk, 57 ; story, 
188-192; fishing, 208; imports 
from, 234 

Japan Current, 233 
Jef, 155-156 
Juan (hwan), 141-144 
Jute (joot), 235 

Kangaroo (kang-ga-roo'), 199, 200 
Kentucky (ken-tuk'i), 249, 269, 270 
Kerosene (keUo-sen), 98 
Key West, 224, 225 

Lace, 129, 130-131 
Latex (la'tSks), 104-105 
Laws, 114-116 
Lead, 100, 260 

" Leak in the Dike,” The, 155 
Leather, uses, 30, 49, 109; kangaroo, 
199 

Lemons, 231 
Leopards (lep'erdz), 136 
Linen, 51, 142, 156 
Linseed oil, 142 
Lions, 136 

Llamas (la'maz), 123, 207 
Lobsters, 77 
London, 163 


INDEX 


280 

Longfellow, H. W., 218 
Los Angeles (los ang'gel-es), 230-231 
Luis (lwes), 1 25-127 
Lumber, 234, 235, 248 
Lumbering, 88-90, 235 

Mahogany (ma-hog'a-m), 174 

Mammoth Cave (mam'uth), 268-270 

Manila (ma-nil'a), 195 

Manila hemp, 195, 234 

Manioc (man'i-ok), 183 

Manufacturing, 107-109 

Maple sugar, 47-48 

Marie (ma-re'), 156-160 

Marten (mar'ten), 163 

Meat, 205, 237 (see Cattle) 

Metsu (met'soo), 188-192 
Mexico (mek'si-ko), 125-127 /- 
Mina (me'na), 153—155 
Minneapolis (min-e-ap'o-lis), 252-253 
Mississippi River (mis-i-sip'i),2 27, 240 
Moke (mo'ka), 181-184, 207 
Monkeys, 176, 183 
Moscow (mos'ko), 145 
Motortrucks, 170-171 
Musk deer (musk), 135 

Nakla (nak'la), 84, 168-172, 207 
Natural Bridge, 270 
Natural gas, 91, 98, 254 
Negroes, 176, 181-184, 214, 216 
New Hampshire (hamp'shir), 270 
New Orleans (6r'le-anz), 227, 242 
New York, 163, 201-206, 221, 222 
Niagara Falls (ni-ag'a-ra), 271-273 
Nickel, 100 , 

Nile (nil), 164-167 

Norway (n6r'wa), 185-187, 208 

Oases (o-a'sez), 169, 170 
Oats, uses, 9; Poland, 148; Siberia, 
163 ; United States, 236, 246 


Occupations, 117 

Oil, 17, 56,142,184, 195 (see Petroleum) 
Old Man of the Mountain, 270-271 
Oleomargarine (o-le-o-mar'ga-ren), 55 
Olga (ol-ga), 145- 1 48 
Olive oil, 56 
Olives, 136 

Oranges, 18-20, 231, 232 
Ores, 100 

Oualdo (wal'do), 136-138 
Oysters, 77, 221-223 

Pablo (pa'blo), 193-197 
Pacific Ocean (pa-sif'ik), salmon, 78- 
81,235; journey, 188; islands, 188, 
193, 195, 198; ports, 230, 234 
Palm nuts and oil, 184 
Panama Canal (pan-a-ma'), 228 
Paraffin (par'a-fin), 98 
Paris, 159-160 
Parrots, 176 

Paul Revere (re-ver'), 218 
Peaches, 23-24 
Peanuts, 56, 183, 184 
Pearls, 204 

Pedro (pa'dro), 121-124, 207, 210 
Pennsylvania (pen-sil-va'm-a), 93 
Peon (pa-on'), 125 
Petrograd (pet'ro-grad), 145 
Petroleum (pe-tro'le-um), fuel, 91 ; 
story, 9‘7~99 ; southern states, 228, 
241 ; California, 233-234 ; Central 
Plains, 242; Appalachian High¬ 
land, 254 

Philadelphia (fil-a-del'fi-a), 221 
Philippines (fil'i-pTnz), 193-197, 234 
Pineapples, 234 

Plains, life, 141-167, 208; in United 
States, 240-253 

Plateaus (pla-toz'), 118, 125, 229, 255 

Poland (po'land), 148-150 

Ponce de Leon (pon'tha da la- 5 n'), 224 


INDEX 


281 


Potatoes, 148, 150, 183 
Poultry, 34-35 

Power, 73-74, 98-99, 254, 273 
Prunes, 25, 232 

Quarries (kworlz), 86 

Races, red, 125, 175, 176, 210; yellow, 
132, 188, 211-212 ; black, 176, 181- 
184, 214, 216; brown, 193, 213- 
214; white, 215, 216 
Railroads, 124, 136, 161 
Rain, 65-67, 71 
Rainbow Natural Bridge, 270 
Raisins, 24-25, 232 
Ranches, 125 (see Cattle) 

Reindeer, 163 

Reservoirs (rez'gr-vwSrz), 71,165, 259 
Rhine (rin), 151, 154 
Rice, food, 9; Japan, 190; Philippines, 
i93> 2 34 

Rivers, 68-70, 73, 74 
Rocky Mountains, 255-257 
Roof of the World, 132 
Rope, 195 

Rotterdam (rot'er-dam), 154 
Rubber, story, 103-106; Mexico, 126; 
Brazil, 174; imports, 204; manu¬ 
factures, 220 
Rugs, 204 

Russia (rush'a), 145-148 
Rye, food, 9; Poland, 148; Siberia, 
163 ; United States, 236, 246 

Sable (sa'b’l), 163 

Sahara (sa-ha'ra), 164, 168-172 

St. Augustine (sant 6'gus-ten), 223-224 

St. Louis (santloo'is), 248-249 

Salmon (sam'un), 78-81, 235 

Salt, 149, 169 

San Francisco (san fran-sis'ko), 233, 
234 


Savannah (sa-van'a), 223 
Seals, 4, 177, 179, 180 
Seattle (se-at°l), 235 
Sheep, early settlers,' 1; skins, 30; 
story, 36-37; wool, 49, 60-61 ; 
South America, 124,143-144; Asia, 
135, 163; Australia, 198; United 
States, 236, 257 
Shipyards, 221, 234 
Siberia (si-be'ri-a), 161-163 
Sierra Nevada (si-er'a ng-va'da), 256- 
257 

Silk, story, 50, 57-59 5 China, 57; 
France, 159; Japan, 57, 190, 191; 
imports, 204, 234 
Silos (sl'loz), 15, 31 
Silver, a metal, 100; South America, 
122; Mexico, 125, 230; United 
States, 230, 257 
Snakes, 176 
Snow, 66, 256 
Soil, 62-64 

South America, cocoa, 38, 234; coffee, 
43-45; Andes,121-124; Argentina, 
141-144; Amazon valley, 173-176 
Spain (span), 142 
Sponges (spun'jez), 224-225 
Springs, 67 
Squirrel, 163 
Starch, 16 

Statue of Liberty, 205, 206 
Steel, 102 

Stefan (st&Fan), 148-150 
Stockyards, 28, 249, 250 
Sugar, story, 46-48; Mexico, 126; 
Abyssinia, 136; Philippines, 193, 
234 ; imports, 204; refineries, 220; 
Cuba, 226; New Orleans, 227, 242 ; 
Hawaiian Islands, 234 
Sugar beets, story, 46-47 ; Europe, 148, 
150, 158; United States, 246 
Switzerland (swit'zgr-land), 128-131 


282 


INDEX 


Tapioca (tap-i-o'ka), 183 
Tea, story, 41-42; Japan, 41, 190, 234; 
China, 41, 190, 234; imports, 204, 
234 

Texas (tek'sas), 230 
Tibet (ti-bet/), 132-134 
Tin, 122 

Titicaca, Lake (te-te-ka'ka), 124 
Tobacco, 225, 226, 244 
Tortillas (tor-tel'yas), 127 
Tractors, n 
Trade, 110-113 
Transportation, 110-113 
Trudi (troo'de), 128-131 
Turpentine (tftr'pen-tin), 223 

United States, manufactures, 141, 144; 
age, 150; silk, 191 ; possessions, 
193; importing copra, 195; time, 
197, 198; wool, 198; described, 
218-276 

Utah (u'to), 270 

Vania (van'ya), 161-163 
Vineyards (vm'yards), 24, 158-159, 232 


Virginia (ver-jin'i-a), 270 
Volcanoes (vol-ka'noz), 124 

Wang (wang), 41 
Warsaw (w6r's6), 150 
Washington (wosh'mg-tun), 116 
Water power, 73-74, 254, 273 
Water vapor, 65-66 
Western Highland, 254-260 
Whale, 4, 180, 187 

Wheat, early settlers, 2 ; story, 9-13 ; 
South America, 141, 144; Europe, 
147, 148, 158; Asia, 163; United 
States, 204, 236, 246; on plains, 
208 

Whitney, Eli (e'li hwit'm), 54 
Wine, 159 
Wolf, 163 

Wool, clothing, 49 ; story, 60-61; Aus¬ 
tralia, 198; Boston, 220 

Yaks (yaks), 134, 135, 208 
Yellowstone Park, 262-265 

Zinc, 100 






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